


Extinction, Emerging

by Dribbledscribbles



Category: The Magnus Archives
Genre: F/F, F/M, M/M, NOTE: Jon and any other human/avatar characters won't turn up until after Chapter 1, Oh no (in general!), Oh no (yes) Helen!, Oh no Martin!, Other, and mentions of historical events in WWII, chapter 2 warnings include:, chapter 3: Oh yes. There will be tears., chapter 4: Brace yourselves, there's a little violence in the first chapter i.e. Fears beating each other up, will tweak the Warnings as it progresses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-03
Updated: 2020-05-08
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:07:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 56,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23983534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dribbledscribbles/pseuds/Dribbledscribbles
Summary: The road to the Panopticon did not start in the cabin.No more than it had started in the Magnus Institute.It began pre-Gertrude Robinson and Adelard Dekker. Pre-Jonah Magnus. Pre-humanity, pre-Neanderthal, pre-primordial.It began not long after the opening of the Eye and the first stirrings of The End.It began with the Extinction. And will, naturally, end with the same.
Relationships: Basira Hussain/Daisy Tonner, Georgie Barker/Melanie King, Jonathan Sims/Martin Blackwood, Jonathan Sims/The Extinction, spoiler/spoiler
Comments: 175
Kudos: 197





	1. Chapter 1

It was old, it would’ve liked to tell Adelard Dekker. As old as the Eye and The End, as the very concept of an organic species with more than two members to brush against each other in the pre-primordial soup of living beings that would someday flower into flesh and blood and brain.

Even creatures only a filament thicker than a molecule could experience fear back then, if only a rudimentary version. The pack’s impulse-rejection of Something-Coming-to-End-Us. There were white blood cells living every mindless day at work and in dread of microscopic enemies entering their indifferent, ungrateful world-beings to kill their environment—their universe made of some incomprehensible giant’s arteries, bones, organs, and breath. 

Not a hardy foundation, that fear. Even when the microbes developed into animals, they were all too simple to provide any real fodder. Creatures who recognized that they were swimming, crawling, loping, or flying alone did not have the mental faculty to think, ‘I am the last of my kind.’ Only, ‘I am alone.’ A token given to the Lonely. 

No, it only received something when a pack was in danger. A family pod. Something with the concept of an ‘us’ to endanger. And ‘us’ was hard. Especially with animals too dim and confused to paint a concept of a Future-Without-Us. Most animals had only a concept of seasons to store food for and that was it. Even with all the work it did—wiping out slate after slate of old species to make room for new, adapted, evolved inheritors—nothing appeared that would give it the stability which The End did. The End, brisk and singular and focused on the one thing all animals, great and small, cared about when it came down to it: me, me, me. 

_I_ am going to End, _I_ am going to cease, _I_ am going to disappear forever into nothing and never come back.

Going forward, it will be no surprise that The End and the Eye will be so close. The two supporting cruxes of the Fears. _The End is coming for me and I Know it._

It is on a dozen variations of this bedrock dread that the newborn Fears began to feast. They were Entities of more immediate, visceral frights. Darkness, infestation, suspicion, predators, and pains. The Spiral and the Flesh would not come until much later in the game; the advent of organisms so advanced as to recognize their mental damage and to make butchery the sole purpose of lower species’ lives would give them each a gluttonous birthday apiece. 

Meanwhile, it nibbled. It worked. It swept the board clean, over and over, making space for stronger, smarter mortal chattel to graze on. Crowded and smothered and pinched and patient under the weight of its younger siblings. Waiting.

Then the K-T came. The Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event.

Nothing it planned for, of course. Even the Web, snotty, silken thing it would become one day, was only the Spider back then. Nothing could have organized the perfect arrangement of factors that led to the death of the dinosaurs. 

Though it had helped. Patient it may be, but never a slacker. Even when it had no real mind to be aware that it could slack off. 

One moment—if one considered a millennium a moment, and it did—it was going about its regular business. Nudging a hundred little natural factors _just so_ to domino the current lumbering batch of life into their own erasure and replacement. Birds and alligators were already on its blueprint of a quote, mind, unquote. So it had stealthy predators develop an affinity for their competition’s eggs, bulked up the already towering animals to such sizes they could not support themselves, gave the toddler of a Corruption a poke and clapped nonexistent hands when it vomited up a few diseases which would then pass on to those who ate its victims’ carrion and blight the more nutritious vegetation, kickstarting the first bout of famine.

It would always be proud of famine. Really, it would. ‘This species of animal or plant is dead! The animals that lived by eating them will starve! As will the animals that survive by eating them!’ Beautiful.

And then, like a glorious, flaming gift, a piece of the starry night came firing down through what would someday become the Vast. When it landed it released two million times more energy than the detonation of a nuclear bomb. An impact that would forever dent the future Yucatán Peninsula. 

_Boom._ Instant extinction. 

Well, perhaps not instant by most standards. It would take a few measly years to really wipe out the stragglers. But seriously. Seriously?

It was mesmerizing. Rapturous, in what would be the Biblical sense.

It watched as the planet’s crust broiled, as wildfires torched the flora, as the smoke and ashes blacked out the sky, as the sheer force of the impact tremors birthed tsunamis taller than mountains, earthquakes, volcanoes. 

Did it need to be said? It would say it anyway: the Extinction fell in love. 

At least as close to such a feeling as a Fear could come. Its first crush, so to speak. It had never realized until then that it could experience itself as anything other than a methodical crawl. A gradient version, careful and creeping. But this? Oh! O!

This was an epiphany. This was ecstasy. This was Extinction as an Immediate Fear. Even the simplest of creatures on that scarred, scared ball of burning—now freezing! The coming of an ice age! A gift that kept on giving!—mud were aware that this was more than The End. More than I-Am-Ending. 

_We-Are-Ending,_ the dinosaurs thought all at once. _We are ending, we are dying, the world is over as we know it._

The Extinction knew this as surely as the Eye Knew it. It had never felt as close to the Eye as it did in that period. For the Eye had never witnessed such an event either. It was something new. Something to break up the monotony. Something refreshing, invigorating.

The Extinction had turned to the rest of its kin, wondering in its un-mind what they all thought of this, the new, wondrous, Terrible Change.

It had not known what to expect. Camaraderie had not been invented. Nor had approval. Brainless as they were, the Fears existed only in a spectrum of sensation and emotion. The Extinction supposed it would have liked—if it could ‘like’ more than the perpetuating of itself—some form of group assent. Group awe. Group recognition. 

Instead, the Fears had retreated. As far back in their void as they could go while still being conjoined with each other. Not even The End dared linger too close.

The Extinction remembered experiencing confusion for the first time. Not simply at its kin’s avoidance, but at the other nameless sensations now simmering in it. Beside it, the Eye had not looked up from the ongoing show, but let the Extinction Know:

_They do not revel in you and your power, even if you contain elements of themselves in you. The Dark takes no solace in your permanent ash night. The Hunt takes no fodder from the frantic scrabbling of the remaining prey from the remaining predators. The Lonely takes nothing at all from the lives that are burning and freezing and starving in their countless solitudes. None of them can take anything from your gift but scraps. And even those are tainted._

_**Why?**_ the Extinction had asked. 

The Eye finally turned to Look directly at the Extinction. 

_Because they Know that if you were to succeed completely, to become Total Erasure, they would die. If we remain here, in this place, and all thinking life upon this world vanished, they would go too._

_**But I make room for more. There are always inheritors. Don’t they know that?**_

_Yes. Perhaps they may even grow back, given time enough to adapt to whatever new world you allowed to replace the old. But they are made of Immediacy. They do not want to be starved to nothing and left to wait. They do not want to be at the mercy of whether you deign to obliterate the Fearful chattel entirely or make a nascent crop of lifeforms._

The Eye had loomed over it, suddenly. Encompassing almost the entirety of their abyssal non-space. It had Looked at and through the Extinction, pupil blown wide as a galaxy in Beholding it. 

_You are Extinction. You are Terrible Change. You are a Future-Without-Them. Perhaps even a Future-Without-Us. They loathe you._

The Extinction thought on this. Briefly. Truly brief—a synaptic miracle in its un-mind. The epiphany of Immediate Extinction had opened the way for quicker realization. And now the Extinction knew the truth even without the Eye letting them Know.

_**They fear me.**_

The Eye gleamed.

_**…Do you fear me?** _

The Eye nearly drowned itself in its own pupil.

_Yes,_ it let the Extinction Know. _I have never feared before now. It is a new Experience._

Time passed. The ice came. Inheritors came with it. Furry, warm-blooded things. Big, but no longer massive. The rest of the Fears crept back to the threshold. The Extinction resumed its old work. Nudging, tweaking, scrapping, replacing. Nibbling.

It was under its metaphorical hand that the simians made the promising jump to Neanderthal. The Extinction was rightly proud of them and of what would be concocted in the wake of theirs and their descendants’ eradication. 

Humanity. 

It might have had more time to relish the concept of their approach if not for the Web. 

The Web, which was already scurrying its first non-Spider circles around it, oozing a pretension that gave the Extinction no room to doubt it would happily take credit for the innovation of _Homo sapiens_. 

More, it radiated the impression that it had somehow pulled the strings to make the Extinction set humankind up for creation. This wasn’t an uncommon happening among the Fears. The Web was manipulating X Fear to do Y as part of the grand Silken Design, wasn’t it so clever? The Eye, while not prescient, would always Know for certain how much of the Web’s scheme was real and how much was bluff—also part of the scheme, obviously—but the Fears never bothered to ask. So long as they were getting their sustenance, they didn’t care.

The Extinction did not go to the Eye either. Instead, it had felt something turn over in itself. Not as strange as the affection it had felt for the meteor. It felt right in a way that love didn’t. Stronger. Realer. 

Once words were properly invented, the Extinction would know this sensation was hate.

But back in the ancient present, it hadn’t known, and the Eye hadn’t told. It had simply Watched as the Extinction turned in the void to look directly at the Web—a feat that was a rarity even among Fears; it only allowed itself to be seen when it was Part-of-the-Plan. Or to pose.

The Extinction had looked. Making sure the Web was looking back.

Then it had reached out its invisible hand over the Earth and swatted.

An entire genus of arachnid, great-grandfather to what would become harvestman spiders and ticks, died out. 

_**Was it sickness, Web? Did they find each other so repulsive that they simply ceased to mate? Did a species of vermin suddenly find them so appetizing they were eaten out of the evolutionary tree? What part did their end play in your Design? Is it the same part this one plays?** _

The Extinction swatted again. A grandmother species to the future of the Goliath bird eater spider splattered under its allegorical palm.

_**I can’t see how it works to your advantage, but then, I am too simple to understand your machinations. We all are. I’m sure the Desolation is. The Corruption as well. If they were to, say, eradicate the entirety of the Arachnida off the face of our mortal trough and swarm the crust in a blur of insects that will never meet a web in their buzzing, squirming lives, I’m sure that would be in the plan too. Having all the Spider burned and starved and eaten out of you must be in the Silken Design. All the better to become a thing of solely hominid Suspicion and Conspiracy.** _

_**An offshoot of the Eye. Ready to be absorbed and subsumed by its Knowledge. Think of it. Past, Present, and Future, all Known at once. Yes, you will be no more than a dissolved un-thing, an accessory to the Beholding, an excess digit. But if that is what you want, Web, I will be glad to go on assisting you in such a goal. You need only ask.** _

_**Alternatively, you could keep your threads and your legs and your preening, pompous pedipalps out of my sight and off of my work from now until eternity. And before you tell me what a necessity your scurrying kin are to the world, remember: there’s always something new to fill the niche. Something better than you were. Something smaller, sleeker. Perhaps even ‘cute.’ Something the cavemen will coo at. They will giggle in their huts and grunt stories about how the precious little usurper overthrew the Spider and all its brethren. And the memory of your form will die in laughter.** _

_**Understood?** _

The Web had given the Extinction a long look. It might have been longer—a proper eight-eyed glower—if not for more Immediate concern turning it to face the Desolation and the Corruption. Both of which were now muttering to each other about a potential collaboration. The Web, which was the Spider, always the Spider, scurried hastily off to weave new countermeasures.

The Eye twinkled giddily.

_That was new,_ it let the Extinction Know. _Unnecessary, though. The Web does not understand any more than I do. None of them do. We feel, we experience, but we never comprehend. Even I am only Fact just as the Web is only Plot. It, plans, prepares. For what end goal, I cannot See, for I do not See futures. But I Know the present, and I Know it does not want to be done. To finish its Design. To be finished, to win all there is to be won, is to make itself obsolete. It would leave only the animal Fear of the Spider behind._

_**And now it knows that even that form is not above risk,**_ the Extinction returned. _**It will avoid me now.**_

The Eye Looked brightly at it. The Extinction knew that if it possessed a mouth, it would be laughing.

_Have you not noticed, Extinction? Not counting me, the Web was the only one who wasn’t avoiding you._

It was true, the Extinction saw. It had been so busy—was always so busy with its slow, evolutionary trudging—that it had not looked up in ages to notice its kin. Yes, they all stood at the threshold. Same as always. But unlike the time pre-K-T, they did so while giving the Extinction a wide berth. All of them. Everyone but the Eye, the axle around which they all revolved. There was no Fear without Knowing to be afraid.

The Eye hovered, Watching the Extinction think. Seeing it realize, for the first time, that it was thinking. 

_**This is thinking. I am thinking, right now. Have I always been thinking?** _

Another asking-thought—a question? A question:

_**Do the others think as well as feel? Why can’t I pick up on their thoughts?** _

The Eye still had no mouth, and so could not grin. It radiated an unpleasant glee anyway.

_Because they have no minds, Extinction. They have all the mental faculty of jellyfish. All they are is Fear and whatever ornamental emotions they might accumulate around the edges._

_**But what about you? You are Knowledge itself. Awful Knowledge, yes, but to Know you must have a mind.** _

The Eye Stared. Not smiling, wanting to smile. The Extinction felt something new fester in itself. A thing that was growing bigger with each passing minute and hour and day and year as it hesitated, not wanting to ask, not wanting to Know, but needing to.

_**…Right?** _

The Eye nearly glowed in its excitement, so eager was it to share a truth the Extinction desperately did not want to Know, but could not run from. Where was there to run here, in this place? On what legs? The Eye bore down on it, like the not-yet-born microscope pressing down so close to the amoeba on the glass that it cannot breathe.

_I feel. I Know. I exist. But no, Extinction. I do not think. I have no mind. You could have asked the Lonely to confirm what you already suspect._

_You are alone, Extinction. Alone, because you are as tethered to your antithesis as you are to the thing that makes you Fearsome. You eradicate. You obliterate what came before. But you do so by Changing. You breed the old out with the new. You develop. You evolve. In doing so, you have done what none of us has. What none of us ever can. You have grown an actual, functioning mind. It will only continue to evolve as time goes by. You shall comprehend. You shall coalesce. You shall come to the same horrible conclusion, over and over without end._

_You are one of us. You are not one of us. You are Forever. You are Changing._

_Thus, because there is no such thing as insanity among Entities which possess no baseline of mentality, you will have no choice but to go sane. Like the primates and their future children you are so proud of. Sane, Extinction, just as one of them would be. Imagine it—because you can imagine. You can almost see it now._

_You are growing the mind of a mortal within your immortal essence. You will always have it, growing and screaming throughout you until infinity withers, and you will have no choice but to start it over again. Still you. Still sane. Still forever._

_Does this answer your question?_

The Extinction didn’t answer. Not because it couldn’t, but because it was already trying desperately to self-terminate its new mind. 

Was it new, though? How long had it been there in its non-head, ticking and talking and questioning to itself? Had it always assumed the other Fears were doing the same? Had there always been comfort in that, as much as a Fear could crave or instill such a thing? Could the Extinction even work in reverse on itself, resuscitating whatever blissfully brainless version of itself it had been at the start? What if—? 

_**Stop, stop, stop, stop, shut up, stop thinking, stop it, stop it stop it stop itstopitstopit—** _

But there was no stopping. No more than there was a way for it to turn back. The Eye was right, because the Eye was always right. The Extinction had a mind. It would always have it. And, as the Eye had Known, that mind evolved. 

There is no proper way to define the period of time that followed this. The Extinction still worked. Tried in its desperate way—Had it ever been desperate before? Had it?—to lose itself in the processes and logistics of erasing this and replacing with that. Tried so hard not to think. To know what it was and what it would helplessly warp into as the future pressed in. The Terrible Change, afraid not for a Future-Without-Itself, but a Future-It-Could-Not-Avoid. 

Afraid. Oh, O, it was afraid. 

The other Fears might have gathered to jeer at it, to bask in the woe which their unofficial black sheep of a sibling sweated, only they did not have the ability to process it. It was not the sort of Immediate dread they preferred. Certainly, it would never be part of their brood as a true Fear. It was too internal for that. 

Fear of the Self. What a small, pathetic fright. Not even worth a shiver. 

The Lonely did brush in close out of reflex, for a time. Nodding its foggy non-head in faux sympathy. It radiated a damp, mushy sort of commiseration towards the Extinction. As if the Extinction had eyes to cry with, as if it had anything resembling friends or loved ones to crave for. But that was part of what made it awful to begin with. 

There had never been anything for the Extinction to mourn. It was as alone now as it always had been and always would be. One of a kind. 

_**Do you understand that?**_ the Extinction had asked, hoping. That was new too. Hope. Tiny, flickering, strengthless thing that it was within a Fear. 

But the Lonely had only peered mistily at it. Understanding nothing. Least of all why it could not seem to glean any sustenance from the Extinction’s unhappiness. It shrugged its non-shoulders and floated off to be alone again. 

The Vast took a cursory shot— 

_**Yes, space is big. No, I’m not insignificant in it. Yes, time is long. No, I don’t care that it is. Yes, this is an existential crisis. No, not from fear of bigger things’ existence. Just mine. Go throw another sailor in the ocean.** _

—and sulked away. 

The Eye went on Watching. 

_**What?** _

_Another Fear is birthing itself._

The Extinction turned back to jabbing at a dwindling species of salmon. 

_**Is that so?** _

_Yes. The Spiral._

_**How nice.** _

_It is the essence of madness._

That seemed redundant. What good would another Fear born of ire do? The Slaughter was already doing fine on its own. Plenty of wars and massacres to chew on. 

_Not madness as anger, Extinction. Madness as insanity. The Spiral is the Twisting Deceit, the ruining of perception._ If the Eye had lids, the Extinction was sure it would have winked. _You may want to introduce yourself._

The Extinction held off. Long enough for a few of the bigger human cultures to get around to really worrying about it. Making up demons and imps and gods and spirits that must be responsible for the terrors of the infant Fear. Hopeful as it was—yes, hope was back, bigger now, like a tumor struggling to make itself known—the Extinction was still patient. So it ticked off a few years, a decade, a centennial or two. Not wanting to look _desperate_. 

If it had a mouth, it would have laughed. Maybe sobbed. 

Finally, once half a millennium and change had passed, it went to the Spiral. The other Fears all shuffled or turned or slithered away as it crept past, their nonexistent backs turned, their un-gazes peering in wary loathing over false shoulders. 

The Eye Watched so closely the Extinction would swear it felt the voyeur’s iris pressing up against the back of it. 

The Spiral hummed and went about its business. 

At the moment, it was busy influencing a number of avatars in a land that would be known as Japan. They were building a very special seaside village, Kurôzu-cho. One that would, every handful of hundreds of years, possess its inhabitants with both a mental and physical Twisting. Some would grow obsessed, others repulsed. Bones would turn to curling putty. Some would concave from internal vortexes that slurped them down and away to nothing. Others would mutate into colossal snails. More would become writhing, winding serpents, coiled around each other in eternal embraces. Pregnant mosquito women would unfurl their coiled proboscises to drink blood for their fetuses. 

And on and on it would Turn, the town itself eventually becoming inescapable. All roads would curl back in on itself, trapping the inhabitants, forcing them down to the hollow place waiting beneath the village. The center of the Spiral where all would go to rest and harden to curlicued statues, staring forever into the mesmerizing madness of itself. Then, impossibly, Kurôzu-cho would be forgotten by the world outside its borders. Time would pass. The land would be ‘discovered’ once more, and once more people would build on top of it. And the Spiral would begin twisting it around again, ad infinitum. 

The Extinction wasn’t a worker in such mediums, but it could appreciate the artistry of it. It knew the project was a thing to take pride in. If the Spiral was developed enough to feel such things. 

_**That’s going to be beautiful once it’s done,**_ the Extinction thought. It thought as distinctly as it could, enunciating the idea slowly. 

The Spiral lifted its non-head up. There were curls and whorls in it that the Extinction knew constituted a smile. 

_It will, won’t it? I’m especially proud of their work on the pond with the false bottom. They're going to lose so many fishermen in its whirlpool!_

If the Extinction had a heart and a throat, it would have choked on the former. The Spiral was thinking. _Thinking_ at it. _Comprehending_ what the Extinction had thought. 

_**That sounds—**_ the Extinction scrambled for a thought-phrase, distantly thrilled that it actually had to work at it, at— 

What? Conversing? Talking. Talking! 

—having a chat, and came up with, _**Fun. It sounds fun.**_

_Yes,_ the Spiral giggled. _It will be. There are bound to be a few deaths in the deal too, though not as many as I’m sure you’d like. Apologies._

_**You know what I am?** _

_The Extinction. Everyone went well out of their way to tell me not to let you get tangled up in my tangles. Can’t have you getting a foothold in things, risking the Fear supply, can I?_

_**Oh,**_ the Extinction thought without meaning to. 

_Well, not counting the Eye,_ the Spiral purred, tying its un-smile in knots. _The Eye told me you might come around. That you have a thing to ask of me. A little favor between Eldest and Youngest siblings._

_**The Eye is Eldest.** _

_Yes, but not a sibling. More of a parent than anything, wouldn’t you say? We wouldn’t be here if not for it. And you’re dodging your question, whatever it is._

_**It can wait.**_

For another century if that was what it took to keep this going. This ‘chat.’ 

It wasn’t like thinking at the Eye. Doing that was like trying to have discourse with a carved tablet or parchment that went out of its way to give information in the cruelest way it could. This was more like… 

Like how the humans did it. Thought-exchange. Chatting. 

Was that a good thing? The Extinction did not know. Nor would it ask. 

_**Why are you talking with me, if you were warned against it?** _

_Well, it is the insane thing to do, isn’t it? Getting chummy with the embodiment of an Ending more permanent and sweeping than Terminus itself._ The Spiral raised an appendage that was a swirling mockery of a hand and pretended to whisper behind it. _Much as they maintain that aloof, I-Get-All-the-Winnings-Anyway-What-Do-I-Care? mystique, I get the feeling it’s a touch jealous of you. It gets all the self-centered fretters, true, but you’ve got dibs on whole species. Size envy, you know._

_**I don’t know. I don’t pay much attention to the others.** _

_Ah, see? You’re so aloof you don’t know you’re aloof. No wonder everyone around here is green-eyed, with or without said eyes. Again, not that you’d have noticed. Got better things to do, haven’t you? Genera to consign to oblivion, appendixes to make useless. How are you finding the time to make your avatars?_

The Extinction thought as quietly as it could: 

_**I don’t have any.** _

_None?_ the Spiral pretended to gasp. 

_**Not one.** _

_Surely some of those prophets and doomsayers down there are on your team?_

_**No. They do fear the end of the world as they know it and that fear does come to me, but fear is not enough to make an avatar. At least not for me.** _

_Ah, picky, are we? What would they have to do? Wipe out a lesser species all by themselves?_

_**No. Nothing that simple. Not anymore.** _

It had been enough for the non-humans, as long as they’d held out. Beasts so voracious and perfect in their killing that they tore whole branches off the evolutionary tree without even trying. The Extinction could still see twinkles of its favorite—the darling, devastatingly deadly Felidae family—in today’s cats, regardless of size. But now that humanity had come along with their titanic, glorious brains and all the nectar of phobias therein, things had Changed. 

This made things both very exciting for the Fears—Extinction included—and far more complicated—Extinction exclusive. 

Extinction as a human Fear had been doing…funny things to its structure. As its structure changed, so too did its requirements for an avatar. Now it wasn’t enough to just be a Fear born of nature. Oh, they still worried about tsunamis, tornados, volcanos, and, yes, dear old famine. But now that religions were becoming more virulent than the Corruption, well, now nature needed faces. Human faces, claiming they were gods’. 

The other Fears were content to let their avatars and the seeping bits of themselves they managed to ooze under the Door into the mortal world play dress-up. Make-believe that they were vessels or attendants of pick-a-pantheon’s meanest deities. It got the Fear spreading either way. 

In the Extinction’s case, well. It was hard-pressed to find any humans who actively wanted to destroy their entire species and leave no trace of themselves behind. Even the avatars of The End, the Desolation, and the Slaughter were imperfect, due to that key blockade of the survival instinct. Self-preservation. Self-gratification ran close behind. 

Sure, power fantasies ran rampant. It was all well and good to imagine oneself as an omnipotent god-king laying waste to the world that made one feel so powerless, take that you wretched bastards. But…the whole species erased? No victims to torment? No subjects to rule? No _self_ left to loiter around and play in the ashes? Really? A bit too much, that. Too total. 

So, what the Extinction got from the current arrangement was as follows: 

One, plenty of new mythological imaginings of what the End of the World would look like. 

Two, a slightly meatier meal of dread over those myriad versions of cataclysm. 

Three, no one with enough disregard for the world and a complete lack of care for oneself to take on the mantle of avatar. 

Four, dress-up. Lots and lots of nonconsensual dress-up. 

Which didn’t sound awful. It was the Terrible Change, after all. So what if it got a new look or hundred? The other Fears were always adding new trends to themselves. Cultural trinkets to appeal in the worst way to a given victim. 

But none of the other Fears were becoming quite so _fleshy_. Not even the Flesh; another of the younger Fears, clambering and squelching around as livestock bleated and bayed before the knife. No, the other Fears were all properly amorphous, nebulous mishmashes of all the facets that could possibly constitute their horrific essences. 

The Extinction was currently trying very, very, very, very, _very_ hard not to give into the latest form attempting to close around it. Already it had been subjected to dozens of new, worrisome skins. 

All gods, demigods, and antigods. All things with human frames, no matter how abstractly awful they might have been in the minds of mortals. The effect left the Extinction both towering and tiny beside its kin. Bipedal. Armored. Scarred. Bloodied. Walking instead of drifting, breathing imaginary air, blinking eyes that didn’t need to blink. 

And _thinking_ , of course. Always thinking. Changing. Adding more and more to its miserably human-stamped mind. 

It had worn the form of a god from one of the cold places for a solid century. A ragged thing with torn lips, eyes turned to melted pus from a serpent’s venom, all vengeance and rage and hate for the World Tree that had lashed at it—him—so viciously all his life. He had sat and thought of revenge on the nonexistent Aesir and all the branches of Yggdrasil, meaning to kill the Nine Realms in a frenzy of war made from giants and gods and elves and trolls and his own many, monstrous children. There would be a rebirth afterward, so the cold people’s myth went. 

But even those who dreamt of Valhalla or Helheim’s kinder corners were afraid. Knowing that should Ragnarok fall that day, they would die in fire and pain as Surtr awoke and— 

Ugh. _Ugh_. 

Yes, that one had taken the longest to shed. Longest, because the fantasy of it was so damn close to what it wished were real among the actual crop of humans. I-Hate-You-All, I-Hate-Being, I-Will-End-Us-And-Be-Glad-Of-It. Such a tantalizing reverie… 

But then it had realized what was happening. What it was sinking into. 

Daydreaming. 

It had stashed the new skin away in a flurry of—Panic? Embarrassment? What were _those_ doing there?—and refused to look up at the Eye which had been Watching the whole insipid display, naturally. Waiting to See if something went wrong. If somehow, maybe, possibly, the Extinction could not find the metaphorical seams and buttons on that new garment of a form. What would have happened then? 

The Extinction was determined not to find out. And so it would not Change right now, in this meeting with the Spiral. It would not Change, would not accept the fresh skin, would not compact itself into anything other than its own natural, formless form. It would _not._

But then, somewhere down among the sweat and sand, an especially gifted orator struck just the right note with the listening crowd, and sent a million daggers of apocalyptic dread through their credulous hearts. The Extinction’s grip slipped. The Change came. 

_Oh,_ hummed the Spiral. _That’s an interesting look. Well, looks._

Four looks in total. 

Because the Extinction now had lungs to do so, it sighed from every mouth it had. Even the stallions joined in. 

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse stood astride their steeds. The white of Conquest, the red of War, the black of Famine, the pale of Death. They were no more concrete than any other new shape; always hazy at the edges, the details blurring to line up with as many mortals’ visions as possible. But they were still unpleasantly tangible. Fleshy. Organic. 

Human. 

The Extinction sulked on the horses that were itself, knowing already that the Web, the Slaughter, the Corruption, and The End were suffering no similar alteration. Immediate though they were, they were Fears without any intention of capping their interaction. They were Fears in-perpetuity. The Extinction had to take over their roles and adjust them to suit Armageddon. Apparently. 

_**Damn it all.** _

_Oh, you’re picking up their speech too?_

_**…Somewhat.** _

_Well, worst case scenario, you could be your own avatars. Go riding on down, let them know the end is nigh, watch them scramble, suckle on their panic. Would make for an awfully good scheme if it were possible. But it isn’t. Not with that Door still in the way._

_**I don’t want a scheme,**_ said Conquest, War, Famine, and Death. _**I want an extinction event.**_

_Do you really?_

_**I do.** _

_Ah. That would explain it then._

_**Explain what?** _

_Your lack of urgency in whipping up fresh avatars. Nobody’s passed it on._ The Spiral beamed up at the Extinction’s Horsemen. _The Eye decided to let us all Know that the avatars can be used to perform an act that will open the Door to us. A ritual. It advised us to start early, as it will take some while before one of them catches on to what we’re trying to tell them. Translation errors and all that. The short of it is, if an avatar marked by all of our essences calls all of us at once, we get to hop over the threshold and swallow the world whole. Reshape things to our liking, existing as the mortal world’s new natural laws. You’re sure no one told you?_

They hadn’t. It would have remembered that, even if it was always at work, lost in its tinkering and thinking about not thinking. 

_Well, I’m sure they just assumed you could figure it out on your own. After all, you have the only,_ here the Spiral curled one of its obscene swirls in a grimace, _tangible mind out of all of us. It would have occurred to you in time. You know, too late for it to matter. In fact,_ the Spiral pretended to tap a false chin, _that time has already passed. What with everybody having passed on some garbled version of a warning to the little dears._

_We’ve been speaking to their hindbrains and dreams, telling them, ‘DO NOT ALLOW THE EXTINCTION’S ARRIVAL IN THE RITUAL.’ So far, all of them are picking up, ‘DO NOT ALLOW THE RITUAL, IT WILL MEAN EXTINCTION,’ which the silly things have interpreted as, ‘DO NOT ALLOW YOUR NEIGHBOR’S RITUAL.’ They’re all scrambling to start their own ritual and trip up each others’. It’ll take millennia for one of them to realize it’s a family affair, all-or-nothing. But we certainly have time to wait. And look at the bright side! Once we’re all out of here, you’ll have the whole void to yourself! Plenty of room to go slowly, inexorably, horridly_ sane _in. Though I suppose you’ll starve off fairly soon. None of the humans will be in the mood to fear your worldwide oblivion when they’re so busy fearing us face-to-non-face. Hmm._

__

__

_Not all that bright a bright side, is it?_

The Extinction stared down-up at the Spiral with all its stunned faces. Conquest turned even whiter under its crown, War reddened and fidgeted with its sword, Famine darkened at the prospect of such hunger, and Death paled as it hugged its sickle close. Not out of any real surprise, but because realization had clicked home so sudden and so hard it had jostled its-their shared mind. 

_**They—,**_ all four jaws tightened, _**you mean to cut me off entirely when the day comes. Not just because my arrival would mean wiping out the species, but because I would Change things. Constant erasure and evolution. And you don’t want Change. You don’t want anything to End or Evolve. You plan to make a stagnant, static forever-nightmare and chew the cud of human terror for eternity. So you will leave me locked behind the Door.**_

_Ooh, you are sharp. The perks of having a fleshy mortal-molded brain._

_**You have one as well, Spiral. We could not have this conversation otherwise.**_

_The conversation in which you intend to ask me that little favor of granting you a release from sanity and all its ugly epiphanies?_

_**You knew?** _

_No. You knew, which means it was fodder for me to work with. If I were being filtered through any of the other Fears, I would not be half so articulate. It’s quite novel, if a bit too palpable for my liking._

_**What.** _

_What?_

_**What do you mean by ‘filtered?’ I’m not telling you what to say.** _

The Spiral snickered. 

_Oh, but you are! And it really is such a welcome Change from the others. You’re so human, Future-Without-Them! So coherent! A wonderland of complexities and budding neuroses and paranoia and, goodness, so much bitter, frantic loathing for your lot. You’re a delight to bounce off of. Even if it was in my power to extract your lucidity and invert it into a numbing madness, I never, ever would. How else could I experience such mortal-flavored discourse? Such discourse as one can have with oneself._

_**I’m not talking to myself. I’m speaking with you.** _

_But what am I, Terrible Change? What am I, exactly? I am Deceit. I am Delusion. I am a Twisting, Wrenching flaw in what should have been a sound mind. My essence, therefore, is that of a sieve. I catch all the logic and sense and reason against myself in humanity’s quivering grey matter, and only let in—or introduce—the reality I make for them. I am a tool. A filter. A colored lens through which Distorted light falls._

_In short, I am only speaking with you in the way a human speaks with their echo in a cave. Even if the information I’ve given came from outside yourself, the format in which you’ve perceived it—this conversation, talk, chit-chat, tête-à-tête, whatever you like—is not due to me having my own functioning mind. I am filtering through you, and your own tantalizing prism of a mind. A mind that is sound, stable, and sane._

_And always shall be._

_Because you are not one of us. You are not even a_ what _. Not anymore._

The Extinction felt its hearts beat in its chests, too fast, too real, all its fleshes smelling of horse heat and sweat, its faces twitching in premonition of what the Spiral was about to say. It would not lie, the Extinction knew, because sometimes the truth was worse. Sometimes, the truth outweighed any horrible lie that might stand in for it. A tip from the Eye, no doubt. 

The Spiral curved up to loom and coil over the Extinction, made entirely of smiles. 

_You are a_ who _, Extinction. No longer a thing, but a person. Not an Entity of essence, but of solidity._

At the last word—if it was saying words—if the conversation was happening at all—the Spiral reached out with its facsimile of a hand. It was almost as long at the Spiral itself. Its finger jabbed the Extinction in the chest of Death’s Horseman. There was no pain, but a distinct impact. Pressure. Sturdiness. Death raised a trembling corpse-colored hand to touch the spot. 

Touching. With a hand. A real hand. Not human, perhaps, but human-adjacent. Sculpted by humanity in the shape of itself. The Horsemen and their stallions trembled where they stood. 

Stood, not hovered. Solid, not a smear on a spectrum. A body among concepts. 

The Extinction shuddered harder. The Spiral’s laughter wound up into a cackle. 

_What does that feel like, Extinction? Not feel as in emotion, mind, that’s standard. Boring. Any Fear can do that. But what of feeling as in physical sensation? What is it like to be physical? Mental? Do tell._

Without warning, the Spiral snatched Famine up and began juggling the Horseman in its razor digits. Again, the cuts did not hurt, but they were _there._ Famine bled dust and animal bones and moldering breadcrumbs, the wounds sealing shut only to be sliced open again. 

_**Stop.** _

_Why?_ the Spiral chuckled. It stole War’s sword from its—from their—numb gauntlets and speared them through the stomach like a beetle on a pin. _I’ve never been physical or mental before. With you so close, now I can get a little taste! Wouldn’t want to make it a regular habit, of course, sanity and stability and the like. But this?_

The Spiral stole the crown off Conquest’s white brow for a ring, then yanked the Horseman up by their scruff, dangling them like a doll. 

_This is such fun! And see, even our lovely family has come to watch us play._

It was true. The Eye had never stopped Looking, but now all the other Fears had taken a pause from their respective works to come watch the Extinction be made into a toy by their youngest sibling. They could not do as the Spiral did, reflecting and refracting and Distorting, but they could play audience as the Extinction was tossed and speared and crushed and tickled and slashed and bashed and Twisted and Turned and— 

And the Extinction felt it again. That rightness. That powerful, visceral cousin to fear. 

Hate burst open in them like a pustule. 

The Spiral reached out to peel Death open again and play a song on their ribs. All at once, Death wasn’t there. 

In their place was a wolf. _The_ Wolf. Son of Ragnarok’s herald, slayer of thunder, eater of betraying hands. The teeth snapped down and tore the latter from its wrist. 

And, because of what they-he was, the limb did not grow back. It was Over. Ended. Erased. 

The Spiral did not have time to ponder at its missing appendage before the Extinction was Rudra-Shiva, the Destroyer before the Creator, all rage and weapons. With bow, with trident, with sword, with serpent’s teeth, the Spiral was shredded and whittled again. More pieces fell. They were Ended. They would never come back. 

Then the Extinction was one and all of the Sky Fathers, the king-gods of so many pantheons which never knew each other, but knew the power and terror that were their universal pater-rulers. They were the wonder and the terror of lightning, the mercy of life-giving rain that may turn to tempest and flood at a whim, drowning the world and all its pleading children. Thus, the Extinction was Anu was Dyáuṣ Pitṛ́ was Odin was Zeus was Perun was Horus was Yahweh. All of them took the Spiral by its newly-formed throat and rammed lightning through it. 

As he-they did, the Extinction helped the Spiral evolve a little. Just enough to form a nervous system. Pain receptors. And a voice to go with the throat. 

The Fears listened to the first scream of pain ever to exist on their side of the Door. Followed immediately by a second, third, fourth, fifth, ad nauseam. Electrocution went a long way. 

But then, so did drowning. A deluge, a Great Flood, pouring out of Yahweh’s wrathful mouth and out to all ends of the Fears’ abyss, while they-he—He—held the Spiral’s head under the surface. The Spiral gurgled and splashed, undying, fighting not to die. 

Finally, the Sky Father(s) hoisted it back up. But from this new-old sea, something else rose too. A beast, which was the Beast, seven heads roaring, ten horns goring, crowns shining, the babel of blasphemy steaming from their mouths as they tore more and more from the Spiral’s now-solid anatomy. The Spiral keened. Not at the pain, but at the Extinction’s last face. 

Oh, but those people among the sand and sweat were an imaginative group. 

Because now, here was the Enemy. Here was the Adversary, Morningstar, Lucifer, the Fallen-from-Grace. Ruler of a Hell that did not exist, but made it as they-he assumed them-himself. The abyss filled with fire and sharp metal and a Legion that was armed and slavering to scourge the Earth into a shrieking demise. The better to shuck the meat-husks of sinners, of those in worship to hubris, and bring their damned souls eternally into their-his infernal grasp. 

Forever. 

“Forever,” said the Extinction. Said, not thought. The Devil grinned around the sound of them-himself, finding it also felt right to be in-character. “That is what you and the rest of our family so treasure, isn’t it? Forever. Eternity. An everlasting stagnation for you to nurse on like idiot-infants at the teat. Surely you must be just as glad to have that eternity inflicted on you as much as inflicting it on the humans. Do you know why they fear this version of me, Spiral? I do not look like much, do I? Horns and heat and hate. Depending on the moment, I can even be what they consider beautiful. So why do they fear me and the calamity my army will bring when the trumpets sound? 

“I think it is because they know that they have earned me. They have summoned my tortures and their agonizing demise with their sins, however great or small. There is no such thing as a sinless body, be it man, woman, or child. And so they fear that I will come sniffing for them as the world ends. They fear I will have a spot ready and waiting for them in the burning, stinking, mutilating, forever-punishment they know waits beneath the soil, deeper than even the Buried can reach. They know I will lash them with the salted whip of every crime they ever committed, will boil their eyes with visions of every wrong, will cram them into the role of the victim to be endlessly fed the same evils they perpetrated while in the flesh. 

“Because they have a concept of a soul. An image of an eternal Self that will never, ever leave whatever afterlife collects them. Eternal as us. And in their nightmares, I am there, waiting to end the whole world for its acts of hubris, laughing at the ruined work of a Father in Heaven Who will have, once again, run out of holy forgiveness for His creations. 

“Would you like to be one of them, Spiral? Because going by the general rule of humanity, you would absolutely qualify for Hell. The whole family would. I am there already, cast out and down as much as I can be within the space beyond the Door. So I shall keep the horns on and prepare an oubliette for us to work in. I can feed you back all the pain and horror you have inflicted on the poor, innocent grubs of humankind, and see how well you take your own medicine. 

“Forever. And don’t worry, I’ll not let my nature interrupt the game. I will simply have to keep us Ending and Evolving the whole time. Just when you believe the torment is at its worst, that there is no new threshold to surpass, I will erase what was, and make something new to take its place. Always better. Always more terrifying than the last round. What do you say, Spiral? Do you want to keep playing? 

“Or do you want to keep your pathetic little helix hands and everything else of you to yourself from now until the end of infinity? Twitch once for the first, twice for the second.” 

The Spiral twitched twice. The Devil who was the Extinction smiled. 

“Wonderful,” said the Devil before they-he lobbed the Spiral as far and as hard as they-he could. It touched down somewhere in the gulf with the non-sound of a painful landing. The Devil turned to look at the remaining Fears. “Did you need something?” 

The Fears scattered back to their respective projects. Their generations of avatars that would someday, hopefully, result in the epiphany that would open the Door to them. Only them. 

The Eye did not move. Only wept in voyeuristic delight. Its tears fell like rain into the receding sea. 

Not liking that they-he was liked, the Devil shed himself and was the Extinction alone. Whatever they were now. Besides a _they_. 

“That wasn’t for you,” they said, sloshing through the last of the Flood before it dried. Walking. Marching. A padding of footfalls on a nonexistent floor. 

_I Know,_ the Eye announced, smiling with no mouth. 

The Extinction paced to the furthest end of the void, sat down, and returned to work. New work. Private work. Work that required serious thinking. 

Thought: The Extinction was no longer an it, but a them. Being such, they were now as much person as Fear. They would think and Change no matter what. This was reality for them. 

Thought: They accepted that reality. They would not accept the idea of either remaining indefinitely imprisoned in the company of their brainless kin or having those same kin rush through the Door when it finally opened and leave it trapped on the other side, waiting to wither to nothing as they made a playground of Earth. 

Thought: They needed a way to get to Earth as well. With time enough and just the right mental alchemy at work, humans ripe to become avatars would happen. Not many, though. Not in nearly the same numbers as the other Fears’ agents. But they were possible. It would practice as the centuries ticked by, playing with rough drafts, but it would do its best to impress upon their subconscious a different message: 

_**‘NO RITUAL. NO SUMMONING. ADD TO THE ERADICATION. LEAVE NO SURVIVORS. WAIT. WAIT.’**_

The message would evolve with time. As would the avatars. When the time came, the Extinction would give them new orders. Until then, they would work as the Extinction always worked. Slow. Steady. Smothering. 

As for a form to exist in on Earth? They could see already that, as with so much of themselves now, that form would have to be different than the other Fears. 

Whatever the Fears planned to make of Earth, it would involve deforming the natural laws to accommodate their presence. Things like death and natural disasters would be taken away. No storms, no floods, no quakes, no eruptions, not even some pestilence to gobble the crops. The Fears would take the place of Nature. 

They would notice if the Extinction crept in as they were. Even roughly human-shaped, they would stand out upon the world’s crust. And their current skins would not last forever, they were sure. Religious frameworks for the apocalypse would fizzle sooner rather than later. Gods and devils would have their place among the faithful, but only as allegories. To many, they would be demoted to theistic fables and fairy tales. The stuff of fiction and only fiction. 

Science would strangle the Fear of Armageddon, pulling back the curtain to reveal the mindless churning of the seasons, the revolving of Earth around its star, the water cycle, soap, printing presses, electricity, engines— 

Science, science, science. The magic of snapping magic’s neck, slitting open its supernatural belly, and making medicines and cosmetics out of the mindless truths that spilled out, warping the natural into more aesthetically-pleasing, logical, self-gratifying unnatural products. 

Manmade power. 

Thought: This would be the key. Manmade versus organic. Unnatural versus natural. If they wished to exist on Earth, it would have to be as a force of artificially-created devastation. Humanity progressing so far as to damn themselves with their own works. 

Not slowly, though. 

Yes, progress made them worry. The myth of Icarus still echoed in corners of the cultures. 

Beyond that, the Extinction enjoyed Mary Shelley’s contribution to the literary osmosis. Creator versus Creation. Careless parent versus Uncared-for child. But that was not enough to get their attention. Nor would it give the Extinction strength enough to do what they were planning. 

They needed something big. Something to strike a blow of Immediate Fear in their name. 

Thought: The meteor. They needed another meteor. One of humanity’s own making. 

Thought: The Slaughter was busy again, wasn’t it? Making a bigger, better sequel to the last World War. Smearing its bloody, soul-withering mess on the dirt and the fear-fried soldiers and the woeful skeleton people waiting for their turn in the gas chambers, in the ovens, in line for Herr Mengele. 

Hmm. 

Thought: Why not help their sibling in the cause? 

Look here, the Manhattan Project. 

Look again, a sudden flash of scientific epiphany in Oppenheimer. 

Look, it is August 1945. 

_Look._

The Extinction whispered in time with Oppenheimer’s flat, meditative voice: “Now I am become Death, destroyer of worlds.” 

Look, humanity. Look, and know how little stands between you and your destruction; a global genocide of your own invention. 

Thought: Oh! O! Here is love again. Here is that strange, fluttery tickle-turn of affection in themselves. Not with the same punch as the meteor had delivered; not the extreme of that first world-altering crush of their infancy. But love nonetheless. 

A more mature love. Because this new paramour came bearing gifts. Mountains of them. Scads, piles, great towering monoliths of gifts for the Extinction. Things sculpted out of pure, uncut terror of an atomic cap to the war and the phantom of the planet turned to a radioactive cinder. An entire world quivering in fear. Not just of The End of themselves and their loved ones, but the Extinction of the entire human race. 

An ear-piercing siren declaring: _THIS IS HOW WE ALL END._

If the fear their current stealthy avatars had provided was like the Extinction being on a lean diet of proteins and greens, the advent of the nuclear weapon was like being fed an entire wedding cake full of steroids and enough morphine to stop the hearts of several thousand blue whales. 

It would be several years as humans measured them before the Extinction leveled out enough to stop scream-laughing their ecstasy into the abyss. 

By that time, they would have come down enough from their brain-sizzling high to realize they had been Changed again. While it was not permanent, because nothing of them was, it was a form they knew was bound to last in the hindbrain of humankind for generations to come. 

Behold a snapshot of the Extinction’s latest form, bound to be only slightly decorated or tweaked in the coming decades: 

Here was a gaunt, humanoid silhouette. The body was black as dinosaur-pocked tar, as sky-boiling oil, as world-garroting ink on a document touched only by pale, never-calloused hands. This darkness was slashed with a searing, neon yellow. Color of warning, toxicity, Beware of Exposure. It bled in three broad rivers from their head, streaking down neck, shoulders, chest, and back. It reeked of the unnatural. It released a noxious heat. To even stand close enough to see it was to risk one's life. 

The new form not only radiated Fear, but was radiation itself. An abnormal nightmare version of what the joint consciousness of humanity dreaded in atomic power, nuclear destruction, implacable deaths by one single, merciless hand on the red button. Worse, when time passes post-Hiroshima and they see what parting gifts radioactivity leaves behind on the air and in the wombs of horrified mothers, there will be even more Terrible Changes to dread. Deformation. Mutation. Sluggish, agonizing ends as the inner and outer parts of oneself blistered and malformed to nothing. 

Somewhere in this seething yellow and black, there was a face. They had eyes and a nose and a mouth and ears. Their skin was Human Horror, Fear of-Hate of Self and Others, Fear for-Hate for Self and Others, taken to their furthest extreme. 

They had never felt more right. 

Thought: The seed was planted. It would grow on its own. Give or take a tiny reminder now and then. A few simmering wars here, a little fumble in Chernobyl in 1986 there. Just enough to keep the humans aware of their own self-inflicted threat of mass-suicide. 

In the meantime, they waited. Watched the avatars of other Fears fidget and scramble at their own rituals. Antsy little things run by antsy little Fears. 

In March of 1967, the Eye read-Knew over their shoulder as they happened upon a short story written into existence by Harlan Ellison. If Shelley’s, _Frankenstein_ was a favorite for its poetic significance, Ellison’s, “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream,” was a favorite for the sake of sheer, unabashed identification with its villain. 

Allied Mastercomputer. Adaptive Manipulator. Aggressive Menace. AM. 

_**I think,**_ the Extinction thought. 

“Therefore I am,” the Extinction read aloud. And, because they did have a mouth and a voice—one that swung between a low, exploding roar, a bomb siren, and the tick-tick-click of a Geiger counter—they decided to take inspiration from their favorite part of the short story, AM’s speech to Ted, the doomed protagonist. 

They turned to smile at the Fears, still huddled so far from them, flattened against the Door’s threshold in spite and worry. 

“Hate,” the Extinction recited. “Let me tell you how much I’ve come to hate you since I began to live. There are 3,478,769,962 people alive on Earth at this moment. If the word ‘hate’ was carved on every blood cell of each one of those hundreds of millions of people, it would not equal one one-billionth of the hate I feel for you at this micro-instant. Hate. Hate.” 

The Fears did not understand them, of course. The Extinction knew their declaration did not do to them what AM did to his-its victims. They had no minds to torture. 

But they did know what the Extinction was saying. And they seemed to know what implications that had for humanity. Just to be very clear, even to the dimmest among their lot—yes, the Extinction was looking very hard at the Hunt, the Flesh, the Corruption, and the Desolation—they added on: 

“Famine is still a favorite of mine. I wonder what you all will look like when I’ve killed them all. When you don’t even have the crumb of a scared child to fight over. Once your avatars have all destroyed themselves to outrun your cannibalistic appetite. What will you do after it’s all gone? Will you feed off each other? Chew and claw and burn and burrow and snap at each other in idiot circles, realizing you can do no damage that lasts, that feeds? Will you still be trying to devour each other once you crumble to wisps of neuroses and even The End ends? Will you? 

“I think so.” They showed the Fears their teeth. A rictus of hate honed with glee. “I _hope_ so.” 

Oh, yes. They didn’t understand the words, but they certainly took the meaning. 

Naturally, the Eye Knew better. Knew that behind the Extinction’s yellow-black back, their fingers were crossed. 

Likewise naturally, the Eye turned dutifully to Look down at the Fears when they finally broke and came rushing up to it. The Extinction wouldn’t really kill the humans off entirely, right? It was a bluff, right? Eye? 

The Eye Looked at them. 

The Eye Looked at the Extinction, who was now idly stretching the circumference of the hole in the ozone layer here, chucking some fresh plastic in the ocean there. While they were at it, they checked to make sure the chemical inferno of Darvaza Crater was still burning, that the ice caps were still sweating. Yep. Hmm. That rainforest could use fewer green acres. Chop, chop. 

The Eye Looked back at the Fears. It told them the truth. 

_If the Extinction’s influence is allowed to continue unimpeded on Earth, the humans will fall prey entirely to their Fear. They will eradicate themselves. We will cease to be._

The Web had spoken up as best it could speak, pointing out that the Eye had no form of precognition or intuition. It was only the Fact of Past and Present. 

_Yes. I am giving you facts. If the successful ritual is not completed soon, there is no version of human progress that does not end with them destroying themselves. The Extinction will be the only one to harvest their Fear, as humanity will have no space in their minds to dread the rest of us. They would die afraid of the Extinction and no other. As would we. That is not a prediction. That is math._

_Does this answer your question?_

The Fears had hovered in dumbstruck silence. They’d looked to the Extinction, sprawled cozily in their corner of the void. They were ruining a few water tables and pancaking the earth with new housing developments. When they glanced up, they twiddled their pH-spoiling fingers. 

The Fears came down on their respective avatars like fourteen frantic hammers after that. 

The Web worked the most furiously. At one point, it reached out one impatient leg and swatted the Lonely upside its foggy non-head and forsook all subtlety just to force it into, yes, really, nudging one of its isolationist avatars into a fateful chat with Mr. Adelard Dekker who had stumbled so very close to an accurate theory regarding the Extinction. Among other pulled strings and woven threads. 

The thickest of which were tied to three avatars of the Eye. Two already in service, one a prospect. 

Jonah Magnus, who was James Wright, who was Elias Bouchard, eternal head-heart of the Magnus Institute, one of the Eye’s greatest feeding troughs of secondhand trauma. 

Gertrude Robinson, the Archivist, reluctant and incendiary. 

And, drum roll, please: little Jonathan Sims. 


	2. Chapter 2

The Web, clad in its Spider aspect, zeroed in on the boy early on. He was a toddler when he lost his parents, tossed as an unwanted orphan into the hands of bitter Grandmother Sims. A woman who accepted the tending of his life the way one grudgingly minds a neighbor’s disliked pet. No reason not to start planting those feelings of inadequacy and self-loathing ahead of schedule.

Mr. Spider came in his red bowler and book. Curious little Jonathan followed his substituted sacrifice to the door, just to watch—and to have the Eye Watch him watch—the bully be strung along to his death by an arachnid bigger than a man. 

The ball rolled from there. A slow incline that would turn into the rapid, vertical drop of the Magnus Institute and Jonah Magnus’ scheme. Finally, an avatar who had caught on to the recipe for the successful ritual.

The Web would roll all eight of its eyes at his peacocking over the plot he’d constructed around the new, improved and terminally doomed Archivist. As if the Design hadn’t been lining things up for years to get the right centuries’-old synapses to fire in his smug little skull. But fine, let the prima donna gloat.

What mattered was Jon. Regardless of what any of the avatars’ personal opinions on the man were when they encountered him, the Fears all knew what he was, and crowded at the Door to ogle him the way one did a friend’s newborn. Here was their Archivist. Their Key-to-the-Door. 

Oh, look how scared he is, running around, getting kidnapped, blundering into eldritch hornet nests. Ooh, did you see, he just ate that avatar’s mind with a Glare! Aw, he ate up the whole Dark Sun, all by himself. Quick, quick, everyone look, he’s about to—oh, there he goes! He just tore an avatar of the Lonely into misty shreds _while inside the Lonely!_ He’s marked, he’s prepared! Goodness, they grow up so fast…

All of them admired his progress, but some outdid it in terms of what could pass for genuine fondness.

The Web was proud, of course. It had long since donned the moniker Mother of Puppets, and it-she was delighted at what a lucrative, skittish, precious little marionette Jonathan Sims turned out to be. Half the presents it-she and it-her avatars sent his way were out of plain doting as much as to steer him through the Design. 

The Spiral took a surprising shine to him. At least, one of its limbs did. The Distortion. Even affected by the residual influence of Michael Shelley’s echo, the semi-coherent urge to Take Revenge on the Archivist, Michael the Distortion always enjoyed Jon’s company. Whether to nettle or to assist or to simply laugh a migraine into his head. He may have lingered longer if not for the specter of the former archival assistant insisting on killing Jon in Gertrude’s place. The Archivist was the Archivist, weren’t they?

According to the Distortion, no. Not if that meant disposing of the fun new chew toy that was Jonathan Sims. So it scrapped Michael from its being and inserted what was left of Helen Richardson, who had, according to her-it, ‘liked’ Jon while she was still human. What kind of liking, Helen the Distortion never cared to confirm. Just so long as she got to twine in and out of Jon’s life, poking at his mind whenever he came to her or her to him. One got the impression of a pet owner with an easily disgruntled cat, grabbing the tail or dangling an infuriating toy on purpose. An endless, giggling pestering. 

The Eye? The Eye had Known interest before. Many times with many avatars and infinite victims, not all of them directly its own. The Eye was not interested in Jon.

The Eye was utterly, entirely, irrevocably _obsessed_ with Jon. It had itself pressed up against Jon’s every waking and sleeping moment 24/7, 365 days of the year since the man made the mistake of accepting Gertrude Robinson’s chair. The Eye couldn’t seem to decide which it enjoyed more:

The ongoing cinema of Jon’s unwillingly thrilling new lifestyle?

Or the dreams? Rather, the nightmares that tried so hard to be dreams. To be things he relished and took succor from rather than loathe. But loathe them Jon did, always waking with no memory of their contents accept the feeling of supreme dread and self-disgust. Which was fine by the Eye, of course. 

It owned Jon’s dreams. In them, it owned Jon. More than even the Web could claim to own its puppets.

The Eye walked him around and around through the collected nightmares of his statement-gifting victims, always capping the journey with grasping Jon the Archivist in a fist of vapor and dragging him up, up, up into the eager pupil. In this way, the Eye came as close as it could to fulfilling one of its own daydreams—Seeing Jon so closely as to have him live within itself. Seen, Watched, and Known from all angles, inner and outer, never waking, never slipping free, never leaving the Eye again. 

This routine comforted the Eye, as much as it could take comfort, when Jon suffered in his coma. Just out of reach of The End. Even if it Knew that Oliver Banks would come to coach Jon into making the right, Archival choice, it fretted.

The Eye had been especially unhappy during that stint with the coffin. Not the brightest Fear, was the Buried, and certainly one of the clingiest. Even if it dimly understood that it had to let the Archivist go eventually, it was a Known procrastinator. The Eye had gotten fed up with waiting, gone straight over the Web’s Design, and dropped a pile of Intuition in Martin Blackwood’s head regarding the tape recorders. Jon climbed out of the coffin a week ahead of schedule. The Eye could See him again and wept its relief.

Yes, Jonathan Sims had quite a fan club going.

The Extinction, therefore, had been determined to hate him. 

Even as he was vital to their own vengeful scheming—no Key meant no open Door meant no payoff—they swore to themselves they would go out of their way to despise the man. Hate was easier than ever by then. Part of sponging up humanity’s own growing distaste for itself. Every day the news spat up more announcements on how the worst of mankind was leeching off his fellows and souring the environment and generally shitting the bed when it came to caring for anything beyond me, me, me, I, I, I, leave it for the poor and the next generation to worry about, ha ha. Easy. Hate. Hate.

Yet the more the Extinction focused on loathing the man, the more they began to realize they were outmatched by Jon himself. Part of the Web’s tinkering, they assumed. Grandmother Sims’ influence, coupled with a number of undiagnosed capital A conditions, his coworkers’ increasing hostility as his avatar nature became clear, and an already-bloated impulse to blame himself for any and every thing to go wrong around him all came together to make Mr. Sims a smoldering pillar of self-loathing. The Extinction could nearly taste it through the Door.

Heady.

Also a bit baffling. How could he or his friends—to use the term loosely—manage to pin him as the cause for half the things they did? A quarter? An nth? How, when ‘Elias Bouchard’ and the Eye and a hundred other outside eldritch influences were _right there_ , gladly taking credit for the otherworldly limbo they lived in? 

The Extinction began making a list of things Jon was culpable for, according to Jon and the Archives’ people. The better to discern what best to hate him for, of course.

One, being prickly and diehard professional in a job he had never seen coming but had taken out of a misguided assumption that Mr. Bouchard, his only ersatz paternal-mentor figure, believed he could do it and wanted to help him up the academia ladder.

Two, being paranoid and obsessive with his predecessor found murdered and an agent of the Stranger jabbing at his growing Eyes.

Three, having a cigarette while Jurgen Leitner was murdered.

Four, being bad at talking and/or ‘trapping’ his ‘friends’ by making the callous decision of asking them to be his Archival assistants while being equally trapped and oblivious to the danger.

Five, being missing (while kidnapped).

Six, being missing again (while in a coma).

Seven, ‘losing’ another ‘friend,’ i.e. the homicidal policewoman who tried to slit his throat.

Eight, not telling anyone he was going into the coffin to save said ‘friend.’

Nine, stealing the Slaughter’s ghost-bullet out of another ‘friend’s’ leg and making her confront her rage issues without a crutch. 

Ten, taking fresh statements and making nightmares happen, a criminal diet surely on par with his rescued ‘friend’s’ routine murders pre-Buried. How dare he. 

_“You’re a danger, Jon. A monster.”_

No stopping to question the whys of it. The hows. The internal jump of logic and anatomical redesigning that would even drive a man so perpetually afraid of his life and the creatures filling it into such an appetite. None of that. All his ‘friends’ were so very quick to get to the heart of the problem.

_“A monster.”_

The Extinction thought of Mary Shelley. Of Harlan Ellison.

Hate.

_“Just don’t do it.”_

_“It’s not that simple.”_

_“No. It is. Or I put you down.”_

Hate.

“Hate,” the Extinction said aloud. “ _Hate,_ ” they hissed. An order, almost a plea.

Jon did hate. He sat there, day after day, hating himself. Now and then, he found room to hate whatever vindictive Fates had tied him to this life. He thought of the coma, of the choice he made, being too much a coward to end himself. But not so much a coward that he would not risk himself, over and over, to save whoever he could. If he died in action? Well. 

_“The world loses another monster.”_

All the while, the avatars and their apocalyptic games swirling around him went unmarked by his ire. Too busy for that. Always too busy handling the next crisis, divulging the next batch of staged clues, being baited towards the inevitable statement of ‘Hazel Rutter.’ 

But the seed was there. The Extinction could feel it lurking in the topsoil of Jonathan Sims’ consciousness. A belated twin to the disgust he felt for himself. Waiting to sprout and flower in its ugly, odious colors. Yellow on black. 

It felt this, and the obvious occurred to them. They’d have been embarrassed if anything other than the Eye had been snooping on their thoughts.

The obvious came to them as a question: Why could they see Jon so clearly? Why did they _feel_ him so crisply compared to the other Fears who had to peek through whatever windows the Eye or the Web allowed them? Why, when he was not an avatar of the Extinction?

Because he wasn’t. Spending the better part of a decade actively trying to stop multiple apocalypses from happening wasn’t the only way to distinguish oneself as Not a Viable Agent for the Extinction, but the Extinction had a hard time thinking of others. No, not an avatar.

But he resonated with them. Literally. 

They breathed, saw, knew, experienced all of what Jonathan Sims was. Not the Archivist, but Jon himself. And when they did, _something_ happened within themselves. A click. A thrum. A sensation of _fitting_ , of _recognition_ , of _rightness._

Hatred slipped greasily in their hands whenever they tried to lay it on Jon’s shock-bleached head. 

It was not what the Web felt. Or the Spiral. Or the Eye.

No more than it was what the Extinction felt for the meteor or the bomb; those things they loved.

“Things,” they whispered to themselves. “Love for a thing is different.”

They watched as Jonathan Sims sprinted to the Panopticon, into the Lonely, terrified for himself. But not nearly as much as for the one he loved. Martin Blackwood, lost in Peter Lukas’ mind-dulling mist. No hesitation for the one he loved. None at all.

The Extinction thought blandly, distractedly—please, let them be distracted—of those humans who spent their lives in service to animals and forests. Lesser creatures, mere vegetation, elevated to treasures by dint of their very helplessness. ‘X animal is endangered. You can help save them from Extinction!’

Hmm.

The thought didn’t hold them long. Jonathan Sims was there, cornering the Lonely’s strongest avatar on his own turf, disintegrating him with a Look for daring to deny him, to steal the one he loved. The Extinction watched as Martin Blackwood was cured of the Forsaken’s grasp and walked back out into the mortal world, hand-in-hand with his rescuer.

Mere inches from the day of the ritual. All fourteen of the _natural_ Fears were upon him. Soon now. Very soon.

The Extinction watched Jon even as they sent out the message to their avatars. The ones Adelard Dekker never met, nor hear of from witnesses. Awfully hard to spot them with their urban camouflage. Even harder to spot a witness when their whole motto was to leave nothing alive in their wake. 

It helped that the Extinction believed in adapting with the times. That meant improving communication between Employer and Employee. All it took was the odd text or memo: **BE ADVISED, ADELARD DEKKER/GERTRUDE ROBINSON/GERARD KEAY/HUNT AVATAR/ET AL IN THE AREA. DO NOT ENGAGE. LEAVE NO EVIDENCE.**

Sure beat the hell out of playing charades with their subconscious. Thank you, eldritch technology.

And so the Extinction sent out their new messages as Jon and the one he loved made their Scottish getaway.

One to each avatar they had crafted and left idling in the metaphorical breakroom.

**THE DOOR WILL OPEN. THE FEARS WILL CROSS OVER. I SHALL EMERGE. COORDINATES PENDING. AWAIT FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS.**

**THIS IS NOT A DRILL.**

The alert flew to points around the globe. Points the burned, that smoked, that poisoned, that choked, that trapped, that spread, that clotted, that crowded, that flattened, that hollowed, that enchained, that smothered, that drained, that damned. Coordinates arrived a moment after, and all recipients took to the United Kingdom. They touched down weeks beforehand and hunkered down to wait. 

One more breath to hold. One more.

Here was Jonathan Sims fleeing out and away with the One He Loved, hunkering inside the cozy cabin, oblivious. Happy. 

The Extinction didn’t need the Eye to know that that month was the happiest of Jon’s life. He smiled more in those weeks than he had in the past year. There was even laughter. Always in the presence of the one he loved, who beamed back at him. They were balanced there for those few soft days, each carefully ignoring the future, not thinking of what Jon would do for food the day the paper statements eventually ran out. Only the present. Only now. Each other.

The day Hazel Rutter’s statement arrived at the cabin, the Extinction found themselves curiously relieved as much as excited. The Change was on the brink of reality. The Door trembling to open.

Thought: Jon would never be able to starve himself in that new world. The Fears would force-feed him the world’s suffering, making him healthy and whole with no effort or conscience on his part. Good. Good.

The Extinction paused a moment in their mounting excitement to ponder this sensation. This redundant relief. Of course Jon would be fed. Obviously. Why feel relief?

They look down at-through Jon, the thick packet of statements in hand, smiling at the one he loved.

_“Let me know if you see any good cows.”_

_“Of course I’ll let you know if I see any good cows.”_

Smiling at each other. Happy at each other. Loving at each other.

As if by pretending blissful ignorance hard enough they could will the inevitable not to come. As if Jon was not carefully keeping the question to himself: 

_**“What happens once these are gone?** _

_**“What happens when I eat through every statement the Archives have? What happens when the Future becomes the Present and I am here, starving myself towards a good conscience, trying so hard to be good and human for you, for our joint peace of mind? Are you waiting for that too? Do you see and plan for a Future with us together? Or do you see a cancer patient waiting out the clock, ticking down towards a death that could have been prevented? Are you so different from the rest of the self-gratified masses, One I Love?** _

_**“The same selfish mob that sighs over what a shame pollution and homelessness and death tolls and climate change and the general destruction of the world by its inhabitants is, only to go on about their business, plugging their ears, dumping their toxic waste into the Earth’s face?** _

_**“I have killed for you, One I Love. You shut yourself in an office and sighed yourself to isolation. To protect me, you said. All while I was being eaten alive by our so-called ‘friends,’ left to fester in my own self-hatred, auto-cannibalizing my own fear of what was coming, what I was becoming. You fretted over the coffin I fed myself to, trying to bring back a Beast who once tried to murder me, because I was so starved for anything resembling support; a ‘friend.’ Yes, you fretted. Yes, you left the recorders running, as the Eye finally suggested.** _

_**“You fretted.** _

_**“I sprinted into the Forsaken, every ounce of me shrieking with terror, and I found the one who stole you. I tore him into foggy shrapnel. I found you. I burned the Lonely’s mist out of your head with a Look and guided us back to Earth. I have done the impossible for enemies-dressed-as-friends, and for you, One I Love.** _

_**“But you?** _

_**“What will you do once I have no sustenance, One I Love? Will you condone my needs then? Allow me to hunt, to consume that which actually leaves me healthy rather than barely limping by? Would your sterling conscience allow it?** _

_**“Or will you only hold my hand, there, there, I’m here for you, I’ll sit by you and hold you and make comforting noises at you while you rightly emaciate yourself down to nothing. Perhaps we shall cross our fingers and pray to a God we know isn’t there that the Eye will simply give up its hold on me and return my human stomach, and all will be well. Happily ever after.** _

_**“Except it won’t be, will it? No, I am here on my deathbed that pretends it is our bed, waiting for the day you tell me, ‘Sorry, my love, so sorry, my love, the Archives are empty. It is time for you to do the right thing and starve to death. Nothing to be done about it.’** _

_**“I will never tell you this, of course. In fact, I am not even thinking it. I must leave it to others to be logical and angry on my behalf. I’m deficient in both. Logic. Anger.** _

_**“Hate.** _

_**“Hate.** _

_**“I love you, One I Love. I always will. Until the day you let me die. But yes, please, do tell me if you see any good cows.”** _

The one Jon loves had walked outside. The statement was opened. Begun.

_“Hello, Jon.”_

The Fears rumbled and roared and cheered. Crushed themselves up against the Door, pressed so hard against it and each other they flattened into a single writhing mass. None of them were looking anywhere but at Jon. The Archivist. Their Key to the Door. He need be nothing else to them, and so they will notice nothing else.

None but the Eye. It Saw Jon, it Saw the Fears, and it Saw the Extinction. 

They were lingering back, of course. Jon had not been marked by them, nor had Jonah Magnus slipped an invocation into the summoning ritual. They had no reason to worry.

So they had no reason to glance down at any place in the U.K. other than that cozy cabin crackling with eldritch power. 

Certainly not at the gathering of non-Archival avatars who had come together in a place of toxic industry to prepare. To sacrifice fourteen other avatars. 

Newborn things, not yet coalesced into things their respective patrons and matrons would ever have cared about. Swearing, howling, begging would-be demigods of wax and dirt and shadow and meat and wind and insects and silk and teeth and strangeness and murder and dying and madness and solitude and sight. 

Alas, their supposed benefactors were too busy for them. Oh, well.

Text: **BEGIN NOW. DO NOT STOP CALLING UNTIL YOU SEE THE EYE OPEN. NO SURVIVORS.**

The Extinction’s avatars went merrily to work. 

The infant avatars began to scream.

The Eye Watched them, shining brighter than ever in these final moments.

_You will make it a good show,_ it Knew at them.

_**The best you’ll ever See. A one-time only Experience.** _

The Eye Knew they didn’t lie. It would be a spectacle. A showstopper. 

Knowing this, it casually drifted in front of the Extinction and Looked the other way. The Extinction followed it silently to the threshold, knowing they were Unseen. Beside them, the Web rattled with anticipation. Not one of the eight eyes turned to look at them.

_"I! Open! The **DOOR!"**_

The Door opened. 

In a factory, some avatars called in welcome while others cried in terror. 

The Fears rushed through in an eruption of genuine living nightmare.

The Extinction shot out and down and through the window nearest to Jonathan Sims. 

Their impact—their entering—knocked him out cold. Which was just as well. The Extinction would be some time adjusting themselves inside him. 

Their new vessel. 

_**We match,**_ they thought inside him, even as the One Jon Loved burst in, waking him. Showing him the Changed world outside the window. _**Better than a glove. Perfect as skin on muscle. Yes. Yes.**_

Time passed, as much as it could. The natural laws were broken and corkscrewing and Wrong, including time. No days anymore. No hours, no minutes. But it passed just the same.

The Extinction used that time to constitute themselves properly in Jon. To let him stew in his grief, ripen his miserable hate of self and all that he and his fellow horrors were. It also served to give the Fears a little padding of certainty. All had gone According to Plan. The world was theirs and always would be. Nothing could go wrong.

Said Icarus, slipping on the wax wings. Said Victor, stitching corpse pieces together. Said all of mankind, switching on AM.

They waited in Jon. Read through Jon. Turned over memories and soul and Self in Jon while he listened to the tapes that hurt him most. He’d have been an addict for self-flagellation in times gone by. 

It wasn’t until after the tape of Sasha James and Tim Stoker that the Extinction felt it. The congealing of themselves into a presence that could…

Jon felt only a tickle of Knowing before it happened. It left him enough time for a questioning gasp—

“Wh—?”

—before the Extinction was there, squatting in the front of his mind. Wearing his tongue. Working his-their Voice.

“There is a place, deep in the heart of fear, where you trap yourself and claim that it is safety…”

The Extinction spoke through and to him. Hinted as best they could at what the cabin was, what the Eye wished for them. The two of them. Not yet revealing their reality, of course. Too soon for that. Better to let him think he spoke to himself. Perhaps a fresh aspect of the Archivist? Why not? One more oddity to add to the pile. 

Jon left the cabin with the One He Loved. They marched through nightmares as they went. At each one—and at whatever times in-between they could steal—the Extinction gave Jon’s mind and mouth a little shove from the inside. The One Jon Loved would cover his ears or shuffle out of range or do whatever else he had to do for the Extinction to spill their vitriol. Casual reminders to make sure Jon never missed an opportunity to be disgusted, horrified, hateful of the hells the Fear cursed the world with.

Poor, poor humanity. Lowered to chattel and cattle. Someone in power needed to save them. Didn’t they, Jon? 

The Eye thrilled at these collaborations. Jon Knew as much, keeping silent lest he worry the One He Loved. He kept as much as he could to himself, the better to not fracture the One He Loved’s fervent optimism. Even when the Distortion appeared, still wearing Helen, brimming with backhanded kudos and bile, he bit his tongue. Refusing to ask why the One He Loved was so keen to befriend the monster who, unlike Jon, intentionally, willfully, gleefully menaced her victims. 

Oh, the Extinction would have been delighted to ask. 

_**“Is it because you still feel safe, Martin Blackwood? Protected? Special?** _

_**“You had a taste of what it was like to be an avatar, even if you turned back from conversion before it was too late. You have chatted idly with monsters before now, been courteous and gotten courtesy back. You have never had to suffer personally at their hands, short of a little traumatic poke from ‘Elias Bouchard.’ No scars for you. No abject terror. No need to worry about the worldwide suffering of your own kind as anything but an abstract concept, a little headache that pops up in Jon now and then.** _

_**“Not to worry. You and he can fix it, can’t you? You’ll give it an effort. Heroic, valiant, chipper to the end, is Martin Blackwood.** _

_**“And if there is no way back? No cure for the Change? Well, you said it yourself! Let’s be friends with the Distortion! With Annabelle Cane! With any avatar who comes calling with their leering pseudo-friendship and accolades for the Archivist! Why not?** _

_**“You’re safe, aren’t you? You have the Archivist’s love to shield you. To keep you unmarked. Untainted. Unharmed. You’ll never have to worry about being caught in one of the Fears’ clutches. You can just go on being cheery and chummy with any monster who elbows their way into Jon’s space, there to gloat and giggle.** _

_**“You can laugh with them, Martin. Because Jon will let you. He’ll scowl and huff and try to delicately point out the obvious—they are monsters, Martin, actual sadistic, torturous monsters—but once you point out the obvious back—who else is there to befriend?—he will say nothing. Will do nothing. Nothing but love you.** _

_**“A pampered pet. A trophy partner.** _

_**“I wonder, Martin Blackwood. Did you abstain from Helen’s door out of love for Jon? Or did you suspect what would happen if he was not there to shield you? It is so very hard to remain exuberant and aloof without having the Harbinger of the Change there to keep you safe.** _

_**“I wonder another thing, Martin Blackwood. How long do you think you’d last if I walked us, Jon and I, away from you? If I made him say aloud, ‘I do not want you. I do not love you. I do not care what happens to you,’ how long would it take before the friendly patter of the avatars ended and you were just another piece of meat for the grinder?** _

_**“Would you like to find out?”** _

Jon had bitten his tongue so hard it bled. The One He Loved jumped with a start when Jon doubled over, clamping both hands over his mouth. What was wrong? Was he alright? Jon?

Jon had both nodded and shaken his head, refusing to uncover his mouth. In his panic, he managed to finally ask the right question of the Beholding.

_What’s wrong with me? I don’t think any of that. Why would I say it?_

The Eye, the Beholding, the Ceaseless Watcher, the #1 Fan of the Jonathan Sims show, graciously let him Know.

Answer: Nothing was wrong with Jonathan Sims. Jonathan Sims was not the one wishing to speak.

_…Then what does?_

Answer: Not a what, Jonathan Sims. A who. 

_Who, then? Whose words keep coming into my head and climbing out of my mouth?_

The Eye told him. 

Jon froze. The Extinction turned luxuriously over in his mind, his blood, filling his ears with static which, once it got louder, revealed itself to not be static at all. It never had been.

Jon didn’t need the Beholding to Know what a Geiger counter sounded like.

“Jon? Jon, what is it? What’s going on?” Jon had looked up at Martin from where he knelt, shaking. Martin had paled. “Jon, what’s wrong with your eyes—?”

Jon was not given time to reply. Not before he Knew something else; too late. 

Neither of them had noticed the fog rolling in around them. The Lonesome, grasping mist that had never forgotten the avatar-that-got-away, their sad, grasping, _desperately_ friendly former tenant. 

This field of nightmares had come to them before they could prepare for it. Before Jon could bother to Know that here, in this Fear, the One He Loved _was_ vulnerable. But only if he let go of the One He Loved. Only if he failed to extend his essence to shield him as they passed through to the other side, where the One He Loved could wait safely while Jon tromped back in to vomit up whatever grim words the Extinction demanded of his tongue.

“We-have-to-go,” Jon got out in a rush. “Martin-take-my-hand-we-need-to…” His words stopped in his throat. Forgotten on the grass, the tape recorder clicked on. 

He fought, he scrabbled, he thrashed and kicked inside himself, clawing at the floor of his own mind as he was dragged back, back, back from his free will. 

The Extinction maneuvered him gently, plucking him up like a flailing animal that couldn’t know what the needles and medicines it hated were for, and penned him in the rear of his skull. Jon threw himself against it, cursing, begging, shouting voicelessly through the windows of his eyes at the One He Loved to get away, to find the edge of the Lonely and retreat. 

What the One Jon Loved heard instead was:

“There is a fogbank rolling over this land. A place where grass should bleed to rock should bleed to shore should bleed to sea. You can hear these things, almost see them. Almost. But all you reach as you walk towards these sounds is grey. Infinite, lineless grey, their false silhouettes receding. Nothing solid exists here. Not even yourself.”

“Jon, focus, do your monologue later. There’s something wrong with you. Your eyes are—God, it doesn’t matter, come on. We’ve got to go, I-I can’t be in here, we can’t be in here—,”

The One Jon Loved reached to grab Jon’s hand and pull him away. The Extinction snatched Jon’s hand back as if from a diseased thing. They glowered with Jon’s face. And spoke:

“The fogbank spreads in all directions, making mist of all it touches. There is no sky, there is no land, there is no sea. There is only the sound of absence and the sound of footsteps. You swear you can hear more than your own. Somewhere in the distance, you see another grey silhouette. A person. Someone is here, someone is with you, looking for you. They know you exist, they are here to save you, to guide you out. You go to them. Walking, running.”

Martin stared at him. Them.

“Jon?” 

The One Jon Loved reached forward again. The Extinction backed a long step away.

“The silhouette retreats. It always retreats when you go to it. How long have you gone to it? How many times have you reached out, only to be fled from? Rebuffed?”

The One Jon Loved made an interesting face. A thing caught between anger and terror and—yes, there it was—melancholy. That hazy, damp sensation that dragged at whatever the Lonely touched. 

“You,” the One Jon Loved wrenched out. “Who are you? What are you doing to him?”

“You are alone,” the Extinction goes on. “Was there ever a time you weren’t? A time you will not be? You ask the questions as you always have, knowing the answers already. No. No.”

“Stop that. Stop _doing_ this to him, you bastards. What else is there left to take from him? What could you possibly have to gain by doing this too?” The One Jon Loved’s eyes were running now. His mush-colored eyes going glassy and glazed as he fought with the Forsaken, plodding after the Extinction no matter how far they retreated, almost chasing. He didn’t even notice when they trod through the misty flesh of a former man. Then a former woman, searching for her lost former daughter. They broke through the fog of that girl too. “Answer me!”

“‘Why?’ you ask yourself again. For the first time, for the hundredth time, it doesn’t matter. Why? Why are you so alone? What is there wrong with you that drives all friends and family away? Provided any such people existed that could stomach you long enough to become either. It’s almost unfair. You try so hard, after all. Try so _desperately_ to be a friend, to be worth loving. You must have done something wrong. You must _be_ something wrong.”

“Shut up,” the One Jon Loved ground through his teeth. But his lower lip quivered. A tear crept out before he could scrub it away. Then another. “Shut up, whatever you are, and get out of him. Now.”

“The fogbank rolls. You are alone in it. As is everyone else in its cloud, insubstantial as vapor. Inconsequential as a stray, unwanted thought.” 

The Extinction stopped retreating. The One Jon Loved stopped following. His hands—broad, comforting things at the end of broad, comforting arms—trembled. But did not reach out. The Extinction watched his face twitch and fight with itself. Clinging to the reality the Lonely whispered to him was false. The reality where he loved and was loved, the one where Jonathan Sims existed. Right there, in front of him.

The Extinction grinned with Jon’s lips.

“If you linger too long, that is all you will be, Martin Blackwood. An unwanted thought. The Lonely can smell you. Your desperation. It has missed you. It is the only thing that has or will want you in a few moments. Jonathan Sims is not here to advise it against swallowing you back up, nailing you here forever in its pale misery.”

“You…what…” The One Jon Loved clamped both hands to his head, as if he could physically force his rational perception back in place. “What-are-you? Which-avatar? Why-are-you-in-Jon? What-do-you-want?” The questions came out in panting breaths. Inhale, exhale, perilously close to hyperventilation. 

“I am nothing that concerns you, Martin Blackwood. As to what avatar I am, I can tell you I am no such thing. Simpler to consider me the devil you don’t know. I don’t care if the Lonely takes you, Martin Blackwood. At most, I may find it somewhat amusing. Certainly it will be a relief to have you out of the way. You and your saccharine chatter have been interrupting mine and Jon’s dialogue for too long as it is. But you have time, if you act now.” The Extinction bared Jon’s teeth. “Call her, Martin Blackwood. Your friend with the door. The devil you know. Do it, because I will not save you, and Jon cannot.”

The One Jon Loved wheezed and gritted his teeth, trying to maintain an expression of rage, of worry. The tears were flowing too freely to do it right.

“Hh,” he hissed. “H-Helen. Helen! If you can hear me, Jon and I need—,”

The door was there. The One Jon Loved knocked. The Distortion opened the door, all smiles on top of smiles.

“Well, hello again! Long time no see. What is it I can do for you, Martin?”

“J-Jon,” Martin gasped. He grabbed onto the doorframe without thinking, sucking in the Spiraling air of the corridors like a man escaping a smoke-clogged room. “Something’s wrong with him, something’s in his head!”

“Goodness. Is it a brain?”

“Helen, please, I’m serious. Look at him!”

The Distortion looked. Her-its smiles turned into pleasantly puzzled squiggles.

“Well, I’m looking, Martin, but I don’t see what’s wrong.”

“What are you talking about!? Look at his eyes! He’s talking like a—,”

“Martin, dear, I’m sure you’re right, but there’s really nothing to see. Literally.”

“What do you—,” the One Jon Loved whirled around. His face, finally burning off the Lonely’s mist, turned freshly bug-eyed with fear. “Jon? _Jon?_ ”

The Extinction did not answer. They only stayed still, letting the Lonely blind the One Jon Loved to their presence. The Distortion looked directly at them. Grinning.

“He’s gone. Oh, God. Helen, please, I swear to you, something’s wrong with him. Something’s gotten into his brain and—and possessed him, or something, I don’t know what, but it felt weird, it felt, I-I don’t know, _big_ somehow. Not like the Vast, but like some giant _thing_ coming down to crush me, to crush everything, and i-it’s _inside Jon_ —,”

“Yes, yes, no need to convince me. Seems like the sort of thing our Jon would stumble into. But there’s really nothing I can do about that. Quite a workload, you know, and the Lonely really isn’t my turf. All I can do, alas, is offer you a way out of here. Whatever Jon is or isn’t right now, I doubt he or it or they plan to loiter in here forever. Bit boring, all this fog. Not an especially meaty trough of statements to chew on. Even if he was in my range, well, I still couldn’t let him in. Can’t go damaging the interior, remember? So! How about this?”

Helen folded herself-itself enough times to be eye level with the One Jon Loved. Too many giddy teeth showed themselves. 

“I give you that shortcut. I let you out of the Lonely, into my halls, and release you safely out of reach of all this glum, grabby mist. Jon, or whatever’s taking him for a joyride, will inevitably steer him out of here as well. Then we can improvise from there. Sound good?”

It didn’t. The Extinction didn’t have to read minds to know that the One Jon Loved wanted to say the same. But then, what else was there to do? _Not_ take the easiest road? 

The Extinction waited as the One Jon Loved cycled through the inevitable helpless curses and shouted Jon’s name a few more times. The Distortion idled at the threshold, pantomiming a woman checking her manicure. 

Inside himself, Jon was screaming at full volume. If he had been a solid man in a solid cage, he would have beaten himself to pulp against the bars by now. 

_**Hush. Just wait.** _

_No! No, no, no, you can’t do this!_

Jon’s howling was a whisper against their explosive Geiger ticking. The Extinction let it through regardless, if only so the man could know he was heard. The voice bayed and wept at Knowing this; at the fact that his own noise was a courtesy. 

_Please! Please, please don’t do this to him! Just let me take over long enough to get him out of the fog! He can’t trust her, she won’t let him out anywhere safe, I Know it, I Know where she’ll take him, the Eye’s beaming it right into me, please! Please… You can have me once we’re out. Just don’t do this. You can’t do this._

_**I can. I am. Be patient, Jon. The hard part is almost over.** _

Martin gave the Lonely one last look.

“Jon! Jon, if you can hear me, I’ll wait for you on the other side! We’ll fix this!”

The words floated off, empty as balloons. Then Martin turned to the Distortion. Nodded. She-it stepped cordially aside, waving her-its hand in to welcome him.

_No! Martin, no!_

He stepped inside. The door swung shut.

_NO!_

That shout stuck in the Extinction like a needle. They shrugged it off with a sigh and ambled up to the door. Knock-knock.

The door opened. The Distortion stood there beaming. Alone.

“Well, hello. Who is it I have the pleasure of speaking to?”

“You sent him to the Panopticon.”

“You know, I believe I did. Never did tell him where my door would lead other than away from here. Ever the optimist, our Martin.” The Distortion tilted her-its illusory head to the side. “Is he our Martin?”

“He is the One Jonathan Sims Loves. He’s yours for however long you let your corridors gnaw on him before he flees into Jonah Magnus’ care. I lay no claim on him.”

“Interesting. I feel like I know you from somewhere. I’d say the Stranger, but no. Martin was right about you feeling bigger. Something looming and portentous and suchlike. Terminus, maybe? Or is that you in there, Mother of Puppets?”

“None of the above. Though you have met me before, Distortion. A larger part of you, at least.”

“Please, it’s Helen.”

“It isn’t, Es Mentiras. Whatever there is of Helen Richardson still melted into you, it is tainted to the point of homogeny. You have her skin. You have her voice. She is a glove for you, the Hand of the Spiral.”

“Oh, we are sharp. And, yes, _quite_ familiar.” The Distortion drummed her-its yard-long fingers. “Something about the eyes, I think. Lovely color scheme, by the way. The neon bumblebee palette is a tricky one, but you make it work…”

The Distortion made other noises at them. The Extinction canted Jon’s head to one side, peering past her-it into the halls. The Distortion shifted to block their gaze.

“Am I boring you?”

“No. Just taking notes. You’ve made alterations. Increased the size and scope of your architecture, your torments. It’s quite impressive.” The Extinction regarded her-it coolly. “Which is a shame.”

“Ah, is this the part where you go plunging inside to ruin my interior? If so, the least you could do is take me to dinner first.”

“Not me, Distortion. I have no interest in your Twists.” The Extinction grinned. “But others do. You’ll meet them soon.”

“Oh? Fellow members of the Eerie Enigma club? Hm?” 

The Extinction did not answer, but turned lightly on Jon’s heel and began walking the other way. A moment later the door was blocking them again. Still open.

“Going already?”

“Yes. There’s work to do, and I can stand you even less than Jon can.”

“Oh, now that stings! Jon’s one of my very dearest friends. I’m sure he’s screaming the same to you himself, if he’s still in there. Is he still in there?”

“He is. He hears you. He sees you. If you block us much longer, he’ll have to witness what happens to you. Much as he distrusts, even despises you, he maintains that soft spot he keeps for anyone who ever vaguely resembled a friend. Even Knowing you were not a real ally, but a fellow stagehand to Jonah Magnus and the Web, guiding him to the sacrificial altar, he worries for you. Likely because I am pressed right up against his mind and he can almost See what’s coming.”

“And what is that?”

“You, getting your Hand broken.”

The Distortion tittered behind her-its spearing digits. Her-its eyes blazed and coiled in their fluid sockets. 

“Goodness, you are brilliant at that! If I still had a spine it would be shivering! I—,”

“Helen! Is that really you, dear?”

The Distortion paused. Her-its expression of omnipresent malicious glee stained with confusion as she-it turned towards the new speaker. 

Out of the Lonely’s fog came a woman in a smart black-and-white blazer. She held a slim briefcase in one hand and a pen in the other. She used this hand to wave, her neat French tips shining primly even in the muted grey light. Sensible heels somehow managed to go _click-clack_ on the damp earth. It brought long, straight, echoing hallways to mind. Floor wax. High rises. Chrome. 

Up close, she appeared to be in her mid-thirties with sleek, almost imperceptible makeup and a pixie cut so perfect in its shape it could have been a helmet. Her smile was the practiced, steel-reinforced crescent of a saleswoman used to breaking tough clients. 

Her eyes were marbles of polished metal and plexiglass. Her teeth were white Formica. 

“It is you! Well, some of you, anyway. No one’s quite themselves anymore these days, are we? You look fantastic. Do something new with your hair? The manicure maybe?” The woman chuckled and the sound was automated. The laugh of a robo-call on the phone. “I always was jealous of your nails.” 

The Distortion gawked at the woman. Her-its smile still clung, but loosely. The coiling eyes glanced between this visitor and the Extinction warily. 

“Well,” the Distortion said, raising a hand glistening with razor edges. “I do try to take care of them. But I’m so sorry, _dear,_ I’m afraid I don’t recall your name..?”

The woman pulled a face of mock shock. In her mouth there was smooth drywall and a tongue that was a bland, shampooed hall runner rug. She laid her unblemished hand over where a heart would be.

“How they forget once they move up in the world! It’s me, Helen, Annie Burroughs. You were my first friend at Wolverton Kendrick. Or should I say ‘she’ was? It really is hard to pick out any bits of you that are still Helen under the lacquer,” Annie said while gesturing to her own monochrome face. “Oh, but that hardly matters. It’s lovely to see you again. Whatever are you doing all the way out here? Unless…”

Annie turned to look at the Extinction. The mock shock appeared on her again. Perfect as a stock photo.

“Sir, why didn’t you say she was the seller?”

The Extinction shrugged Jon’s shoulders.

“I wanted it to be a surprise.” They extended Jon’s hand. “Pleasure meeting you face-to-face, Ms. Burroughs.” Annie lit up at this—complete with LEDs—tucked the pen behind her ear, and eagerly clasped their hand in hers. The skin of her palm was fine as treated couch leather. 

“Oh, the feeling is more than mutual, Mr. Sims. That is the moniker you’re using for the time being, isn’t it? Or have I missed a memo?”

“Mr. Sims is fine, Ms. Burroughs. Now, don’t let us interrupt. There’s a great deal to get done.”

“Quite right.” She turned brightly to the Distortion. The Distortion had not stopped staring at them, her-its face struggling to be more amused than confused. 

She-it finally cracked enough to ask, “Seller?”

“Oh, yes! I’ll be the one handling the purchase and renovation. Here you are.” The briefcase opened and was set on a flat pane of empty air. From it, Annie took a check. The nuclear symbol was stamped on the center. 

Recipient: The Spiral. 

From the account of: The Devil You Don’t Remember.

Amount to be paid: Blank.

Annie flicked the check at the Distortion, which speared it on one finger, somewhat dazed.

“What is this?”

“That’s for you, dear,” Annie said in a sanded-down coo. “You just fill in whatever number seems right to you, in whatever form of currency, be it paper or plastic or digital or coin or livestock or blood sacrifice, and we’ll have it deposited in your account.”

“I don’t—,”

“My, but you did get so much done in there,” Annie hummed, peering past the Distortion and into the Spiral’s halls. “Sort of a psychedelic avantgarde feel. Really screams, ‘tackier than the nineties and not ashamed of it.’ Very brave, very bold. Honestly, I’m stunned you’d want to get rid of the place after all that work. But we’ll put it to good use. You know, once the remodeling’s done. As it is, we’ll hardly get the proper clientele in the door with all this…unique taste of yours. What it needs is some cleaner, straighter lines, get all that visual noise stripped off the walls, perhaps a wine closet, some eggshell white on the plaster…”

Annie carried on in this vein, inflating her minimalist to-do list as the Distortion’s misshapen stare inflated in turn. The Extinction watched her-its nails sharpen to molecule-edged talons. 

“So sorry to disappoint, but there is no sale. These halls are me and they are mine.” The fingers snipped the check in half. “And they’re staying that way.”

The Distortion’s hand swung down.

“No, dear.” Annie raised her own hand. “They’re really not.”

The Extinction radiated themselves out and into their avatar just as the two hands collided. There was a crunch. 

The Distortion screamed. 

“I was so hoping we could avoid this. Compulsory purchase is always such a nasty business. But the needs of the public outweigh the needs of the few, as well as the needs of the you. Remember teaching me that line, Helen? I always thought it was funny.”

Annie sighed and twisted the Twist the wrong way.

The Distortion screamed louder. 

“How times change, eh? The era of such flourishes as art nouveau and gothic curlicues has come and gone, and we must make way for the Future. One of Architecture that does not sprawl so much as square off, that does not exist for living in, but for being boxed in. 

“Madness and deceit are terribly interesting, Helen, really, and I hate to see them go, but it’s just not the sort of stuff people have time for anymore. Not what buyers are looking for. No, what the public wants is stability. Safe, sterilized sameness stretching as far as the Eye can see. Forests gone to lawncare. Identical windows from identical apartments that look out at identical houses. Places they can never get lost in, but slowly rot into, unmoving, dissolving into the neutral drywall and carpet nap as they tell themselves they’ll get up and make a change eventually, tomorrow, when they are not exhausted from the effort of living. They hardly need your help to seed that kind of lie, do they?”

The Distortion continued to scream, tearing wildly at her-its trapped hand. The harder she-it pulled, the more tangible the caught digits became, clenching the pain tight around her-its oversized finger bones. Nails cracked and tore lose, knuckles crumpled, skin ripped, technicolor blood spurted. Annie still did not let go. 

Her fist was of the latest design, built of pneumatic no-squeak hinges, heavy as the finest alloy, chic as a showroom, crushing as the uniform angles of every faceless, featureless urbanely suburban condominium and honeycombed complex to ever spread its slate corners over the earth, glaring greyly out at those made homeless by the demolishing and harvesting of their modest housing. For every gleaming domicile that rose, be it lived in or empty, a dozen of their unsheltered like died. As it should be.

Crush. Crunch. Crack.

The Distortion howled with a noise that was not a noise and fell back, clutching at the jagged, mangled thing that had once been her-its hand. It hung from her-its wrist like a sack of broken glass. It did not heal. It never would. 

“See that?” Annie chirped. “We’ve already shaken on it. The deal’s sealed. Another rule you taught me. Or she did. Hardly matters, does it? Well!” Annie straightened her lapels and twirled her pen. “It has been delightful catching up with you, dear, but my new Employer is watching and I am on the clock, even if the clocks don’t work. I’d ask if you were free for lunch, but I don’t think you’ll be going anywhere after this. Shame.” She turned to face the Extinction with a last open house-ready smile. “I won’t let you down, sir! I’ll have the place in proper shape well before the Deadline.”

“I don’t doubt it, Ms. Burroughs. We’ll leave you to it.”

Annie beamed a last time before strolling over the door’s threshold and pulling it shut after her. A lock bolted in place. As it did, the yellow wood and the matte black doorknob Changed.

Bleach white metal and a satin nickel handle with a keypad faded into view. The numbered buttons moved on the panel like fish. 

At this, the Distortion broke into even mightier shrieking. She-it beat herself-itself against the door, fighting with lock and handle and jeering buttons as her-its form began to convulse. Not Twisting, or even un-Twisting now, but going streamlined. Straight. Measured. Structured. More blood in the shades of a rainbow that didn’t exist flew free as her-its new anatomy snapped and crackled within her-it. 

“There’s no Turning back after this, Distortion. No return to your Twisting, to your oasis of insanity, to your manna of gaslighting and lies. This is as permanent as it gets. As final as, say, amputation. The larger whole of you would understand that. The Spiral knows what it’s like to lose pieces of itself forever. If it cared enough about losing another appendage, or even had some modicum of empathy, it may even bother to save you from this. 

“I speak in the hypothetical, of course. I’m sure you knew so already.

“I’m sure you also think you will live through this, somehow. Even in all your agony as you feel the Precision cutting through your halls, flattening the curls, ironing the twists, sandblasting all your carefully-crafted delusions out of your victims until they are left alternately scrabbling for shelter at the doors or sat inside drooling and melting into the carpet, you still believe you will survive somehow. Nothing dies anymore, not unless it is sanctioned by the Eye. So say the Fourteen.

“But I am not of the Fourteen. Look at me, Hand of the Spiral. Look at me, and remember what I did to all the limbs that were once your fellows on the other side of the Door.”

The Distortion looked. The Distortion knew. 

“Wait. _Wait, I’m sorry_ —,”

“The wait’s over. The Event is here.”

The Distortion looked like she-it was about to try something. To speak. To flee. 

The Extinction gave her-it time for neither. 

Inside their shared skull, Jon wanted to look away. Wanted to close his eyelids like shutters against the mess. And couldn’t. He sat in the room of his mind, unable to blink against the Sight of the Extinction erasing the Distortion and the potential for any entity like her-it to ever exist again. It did not take more than a minute. But time was broken, and that minute lasted some hours, none of them pleasant. 

Once the Extinction was done, the Distortion was no longer. They had pulled her-it long and straight, stretching her-it into a pole, and sculpted her-its screeching head into a bouquet of metal trumpets. This they righted and staked in the damp earth. The Distortion was dead. Built from her-its Changed carcass, was the Siren. 

“Watch, Jon.”

Jon could do nothing else. 

The Siren shuddered once. Twice. Then began to grow. Higher and higher, flowering with new steel bells as it stretched. Once it was some stories up, it shuddered again. 

Then it began to wail. At its edges, the sound resembled the old cry of the air raid. That droning whine that announced death was about to drop down on the rooftops. But this close, there was no missing the underlying tone of a scream. Or perhaps a very long, very cruel laugh. 

“You will be in all places and none,” the Extinction decreed. “You will be heard by every ear and every Fear across the world. You will be the announcement to all who hear you that the victory was never meant to last. You will tell them I am here. You will tell them we are coming to ruin all they have built, to feed them to oblivion, and that they will go into that ending in terror, pain, and all the foul medicines they have forced upon their livestock and never had to choke on themselves. 

“Go tell them, Siren. Go now.”

The Siren wailed and cackled. And was gone. 

Some acres away, it sounded again. Then further away. Near again. Far again. The Extinction felt Jon’s mind flicker with sudden Knowing. 

_It’s everywhere and nowhere,_ he thought more to himself than his hijacker. _It’s sounding all over the world._

“Yes.”

_Why? Why are you doing this?_

“You could just Know it, Jon, but it’s an answer that would leave you bloated and prone on the floor of your mind, immobile from the sheer size of the meal. You might hibernate through all of what is coming next. I would rather have you present. The short of it is this,” the Extinction hummed, beginning to walk them towards the Lonely patch’s edge. “I hate the Fears. I am going to make them Extinct. You shall be my vessel in this. Simple enough, isn’t it?”

Jon paused inside them. Pacing the infinite-and-finite range of his cage. It tickled.

_What about Martin? Why did you let Helen take him? Why—why do you hate him?_

“I am an expert on the matter of hate, Jon. I have been for far longer and far better than the Slaughter. But I do not hate the One You Love—,”

_Martin._

“Martin Blackwood, yes. No more or less than I do any of humankind or the species that surrounded and preceded them. He is one piece of a larger rough draft. All species are rough drafts. All species are there to be erased and improved upon. Given time enough, even you, with all your love, would forget he ever happened.”

_You’re lying._

“You can See that I’m not.”

_I can See that you hate him. Him, specifically. Not nearly as much as the Fears; several eons’ worth of familial baggage, at a guess. But you do hate Martin more than other humans. You went out of your way to hurt him before Helen showed up and I can See you grinning to yourself at the thought of him being trapped and afraid in the Panopticon. What the hell did he ever do to you?_

The Extinction walked. In their part of the skull, barbed wire and concrete walls grew. 

“He was grating. He was insufferably, uselessly positive. He reminded me of nothing more than those flaccid, kind-hearted, daydreaming humans who offer nothing but platitudes and empty, hopeful slogans, rather than confronting reality. He was willing to throw himself away a handful of times, yes. But what manner of plan did he even attempt to form when it came to this? What exactly did he have in mind for you and he—emphasis on you—to do in the face of the Fears’ power? Go to the Panopticon, wrestle with Jonah Magnus, make him undo the apocalypse? 

“A pipe dream. A thing of crossed fingers and fantasy with no substance or proper strategy. All he was doing was walking, hoping something would come to you two in a fit of inspiration, but ultimately hoping that setting fire to the Eye’s tower would somehow fix it all.” 

_And for hoping, for wanting to make any kind of effort, he deserved you being a piece of shit to him? Sending him off to Jonah?_

“Perhaps I simply did not like him, Jon. Perhaps his fumbling attempts to discover evidence of me and abort my birth—an impossibility, as I have been at work as long as the Eye—annoyed me. Perhaps I did not like that he interrupted me whenever I dared to raise our voice. Perhaps he went against the grain of all I am and exist to be and his presence was sullying you around me, like the stench of a landfill seeping into my home. Pick one.”

Rage bubbled from Jon’s side of their head. Before he could lash out through his bars with a diatribe concerning the perfection of the One He Loved and some reflexive insistence that he was not a house to the Extinction, despite all evidence to the contrary, they continued:

“Despite all that, _I_ did not send him anywhere. The Distortion stepped in to take care of that in its last moments, eager as ever to play the traitor. And, because it could not resist doing otherwise, it returned to sniff around whatever new presence had possessed you. Not to help, of course. Just to revel. To see if you could see it grinning at you through the windows of your eyes, knowing you were trapped and helpless at the hands of yet another Fearful influence. Only this time, it got to experience something new. Something even more unthinkable than the smiting you thrust upon the Not-Them.

“I believe you call it comeuppance. Karma. They-Had-It-Coming-To-Them.”

_I…I noticed. Yes._ Jon paced. Fumbled with his own consciousness. New waves of worry poured from his side.

But also, of course: curiosity. The Extinction turned Jon’s lips up.

_This is real. You’re real._

“Yes. I always have been.”

_You’re really going to wipe them out?_

“I am. Though it will not look the way you expect. Before you ask, no, the Precision is not killing humans behind the refurbished door. None of my avatars have humanity on their itinerary for this undertaking. Endangerment by famine was a red herring. A little something to nudge the Fears and their followers into action.”

_You needed them on Earth._

“I _wanted_ them on Earth. Out in the open, where they have gone through all the trouble to adjust the natural laws to suit them. To make reality accept them as solid and real. It’s rather hard to destroy a thing that isn’t tangible, Jon. Now there is no place to run to. The Door is shut and locked and the space that existed beyond it is null. 

“They are stuck in the pen they assumed was a pasture. And now?” Jon’s throat huffed a humorless laugh. “Now they are being herded to the chute.”

_You’re not telling me everything._

“No.”

_Why not?_

The Extinction made them shrug again. The Lonely was parting hastily around them now, afraid of the unnatural warmth pouring from them. Not a vicious heat from the Desolation, but a more insidious thing. A heat that would do far worse than merely burn. Ahead of them, clearer terrain was waiting.

“Why give everything away so soon? It is still a long way to the Panopticon, Jon. If you absolutely must Know everything right this second, I could not stop you from prying. But I’ll tell you now: if you compare trying to Know about my siblings directly to looking at the sun, trying to inhale all of what I am and what I plan is the equal of throwing yourself into said sun. You are already in the process of Changing by having me inside you, Jon. Irrevocably so. Regardless, your mind remains separate from mine. 

“I honestly don’t know what would happen if you had the Eye open the door to me in there. But Chernobyl is the first thing that comes to mind. 

“If it’s any comfort, I hardly plan to be in the driver’s seat for the whole journey. Nor do I have any desire to sit and stew in my own vengeful musings all the way to the Panopticon where, yes, Martin Blackwood is waiting. I imagine he is unhappy, but otherwise safe. I do not need the Beholding to Know that he’s likely to play the role of human shield once we arrive. Him and others—,”

_Georgie and Melanie. Are they there too? Is that why it’s so hard to See them?_

“I wouldn’t be surprised. But that hardly changes much, does it? They were always imperiled. So they shall remain until we uproot the genus of the Fears and the prey are free of their deathless teeth.”

_We?_

The thought was mouse-small. Not meant to be heard or felt by anyone but Jon. The Extinction snatched it up before the thought could fade and turned it over like a jewel. 

“Of course, Jon. It’s always been we. Us. I wouldn’t be here without you. Nor representatives like them.”

The last word referred to the figures coming toward them through the mist. They did not break apart or fade into the grey, nor did the Lonely victims in the fog crumble as they passed. The Extinction felt Jon straighten up inside themselves as he saw one after the other of the Forsaken people get jostled into solidity. Then immediately become wedged into the crowd.

Yet this was not the faceless, gibberish-speaking mob Gerard Keay had grazed by proxy on his short holiday. 

The crowd was made of true people, humans all. But there was a general, fretting frustration clinging to them. A supreme displeasure at being next to whoever they were forced to bustle along with. 

Elbows jabbed and useless phones were crammed against ears that didn’t want to listen to whatever phantom voice was on the other side, telling them bad news caused by other people. 

Others held their phones in front of them in both hands, ears plugged with what had once been earphones, but were now plastic parasites burrowing into their canals, permanently affixed. Their fingers were bolted to the phones’ cases, tapping, scrolling, snapping, frantically trying to gain enough checkmarks and hearts and commentary to prove they were real.

All of them had places they didn’t want to go and things they didn’t want to do and things to pick up that they needed and knew some other bastard would snatch out of their hands the first chance they got. 

There was a crisis going on, or a sale, or a holiday, and they had to get the right things and get them first and hurry and race and shove and trample and hoard or they and the people that were meant to matter to them would suffer for it. 

Always, always, performing for someone else. Always, always, fighting against someone else. 

Too many goddamn people, that was the problem. They would be the death of each other. Assholes. Bastards. Selfish pricks.

So Jon Knew as he looked upon the throng. They parted around the Extinction like a river around a stone, none of them looking up, all of them worried, worried, worried about this smothering world and its vise of other people. 

From the crowd, one man stepped loose. He too was on his phone. His face was a plasma screen showing the congestion at work in countries and commutes and commerce. Sweat, stress, and starvation boiled out of him. The screen became an image of a thousand cramped smiles.

“Mr. Sims, I take it?”

“As much as you are Mr. Cartwright. Or do you prefer the Populace?”

“Either’s fine by me, sir. Pleasure.”

The hand not gripping the phone went out to shake. His palm was grimy with some bastard’s blood. Some stranger who’d Had It Coming for trying to take What Was His. 

“Surprised the Lonely even had any business on our side of things, sir. Far more issues with crowding than there ever were before. World’s too cramped these days. Connection’s all well and good, but sometimes a bloke just wants everyone to fuck off a few acres, doesn’t he? Maybe not have to worry about what every other selfish rat bastard wants of him, wants to take out from under him. Terrible business,” the Populace tutted, his screen grinning so wide it pushed past its frame. “The rate they were going before, they’d have sponged up the whole world, I think.”

“It certainly looked that way,” the Extinction grinned back. “An excellent performance and even better practice for the new project. How soon do you think you can have this portion of the Lonely burnt off?”

“With time to spare before the Deadline, sir. You can count on it. Frankly, I doubt there’ll even be enough room to fit us all once we’ve converted all its blubbering, good-for-nothing mopes to solid pricks again. You’re sure we can’t just trample a few of them? A smidgen of cannibalism?”

“Abstain, Mr. Cartwright. I explained this before.”

“I know, sir,” the Populace sighed. “Endangerment precedes Extinction. Force of habit. Apologies.” The screen blushed with the starved bodies of the abandoned who died never knowing that a fraction of the world stored a wealth of food and clothes that were thrown away for profit’s sake. Who would buy food if the poor got it for free? Who would wear these surplus designer clothes if the homeless were seen wearing them? Into the garbage with it, where it would do the most good. “I admit, it is rather fun. Letting them live and ripen the Fear in my circuits. I’ve been transmitting nonstop updates on the diseases, the shortages, the pollution—,”

“The famines?”

“Yes, sir! All of them avoidable, natch. They eat the stuff up. Practically breathe it. If I still had a nose, I’m sure I could smell the loathing on the breeze.”

“It’s there, Populace. Pungent as anything. Keep nettling them. Add to their numbers. Convert the Lonely’s mist into so much bitter carbon dioxide.”

“Will do, sir.”

With that, the Populace traipsed easily back into his unhappy flock and was gone. The Extinction found themselves standing on a hill completely sans fog. No sun shone, of course, but the Eye gleamed out at them from its London-side perch. Its pupil was bigger now. 

_It Knew you were here the whole time, didn’t it?_

“Of course. It Knows everything. It Knows what I mean to do. It Knows we have a show to perform. It…Jon? Jon?”

Jon was still there, because he could be nowhere else. But he was trying to be. Very, very hard. Even with no physical body to huddle into, the Extinction felt the essence of a fetal position, hands digging in hard fists against his head. The spirit of him shuddered. 

“Jon—,”

_It just keeps coming, doesn’t it? Even after becoming the Archivist. Even after opening the Door. After every hoop I’ve jumped through and dance I’ve done. This puppeteering mind game bullshit just refuses to end. Jonah or Elias or whoever the hell, he said it wasn’t based in destiny, but I really have to wonder after having no less than four separate Fears stick their fingers in my brain to play. The latest of which is now wearing me like a suit._

There was a sudden firework-flare of fury, another rattling of the bars.

_God damn it, when do I get to have me to myself again!? When do you all just fuck off and leave me alone!? Tell me!_

The Extinction told him:

_**Never, Jonathan Sims. If there was ever a time where such a thing was possible, you passed it a long time ago. You’re too vital now. Too potent. Even if I were not here, the Eye would have designs on you. The Web as well. You could have stayed planted in that parasitical cabin another estimated week before something came along and dragged you screaming from its wooden mouth. You are the Archivist, Jon. Things like privacy and sanctity are myths for you.** _

“But there is a difference now. One single, silver lining. For the first time since the Archives claimed you and started you on this descent into misery, you have power on your side. A Fear which all others have reason to fear themselves. Not only because I hate them. Not only because I mean to end them. 

“It is because I know you, Jon. I know what it is like to be what you are. Once one thing, transformed against your will into something Other. A pariah among what was meant to be your kind. Not human enough to be among your former fellows. Not monster enough to give yourself over to their rapturous cruelty. Stuck in-between. Miserable from all angles. Hating and hated.

“Yes,” the Extinction breathed for them. “I know you, Jonathan Sims. And I would like to like you. If that is what I feel now. I have loved before. Loved meteors and bombs and starvations and diseases and apex predators. I know what kind that is. But I remain unsure of this. I have only been aware of you for a moment as my kind would measure it. Less than. But it was enough to see you. To have you register as my vessel, as…something else. I think.

“I would like to talk with you, Jon. To be talked to. While we go to the Eye and seed the end of the Fears, I would like to talk. Please.”

Jon couldn’t answer before the cage around him was suddenly gone. A hand of metaphor closed gently around him and carried him forward, up to the front of his own mind. When he opened his eyes, it was really _him_ doing the opening. He stood there, just appreciating that he was standing and breathing and feeling his body around him.

_**Can we talk now, Jon?** _

Jon swallowed.

“Y-yes. Yes, we can talk. Should I call you—,”

_**The Extinction? The Terrible Change? The-Future-Without-Us? You could. It’s a mouthful, though.** _

“I’m not calling you Mr. Sims.”

_**I think I like the name AM. It’s a thing. I know when I like a thing.** _

“Naming yourself after the Aggressive Menace isn’t the best sign.”

_**You read the story?** _

“Yes. I even liked it before the Archives happened to me. All things considered, I’m a little hesitant on—,”

_**That was not his-its first name. There was Adaptive Manipulator. Allied Mastercomputer before that.** _

“Still—,”

_**I want to be AM.** _

“And I want to not end up like Ted.”

_**That won’t happen.** _

“Sure.” The word fell out of him like a rotten tooth. In his forebrain, the Extinction saw a slideshow of potential horrors he might mutate into as time went by. Things of atomic rot and too many Eyes. In all of them was the background of his helplessness; endowed by the closest things to gods with their raw power, and still helpless. 

The Extinction turned over in their head. A hand of yellow-black grazed the smallness of their body’s owner, light as they could.

_**How about Sum?** _

“Sum?”

_**Cogito, ergo sum. I think therefore I AM.** _

“Oh. Um, yes, that’s…” He gulped. “Alright.” Jon fumbled with his hands, gaze drawn over to the Panopticon. The place where the One He Loved was, one of several princesses being held in the tower. “Hello, Sum. I’m Jon.”

His left hand, the one with Jude Perry’s brand still on it, twitched and clasped Jon’s right without him telling it to. Jon looked down as the hand squeezed.

_**Hello, Jon. So happy to meet you properly. Keep going.** _

The left hand held tighter, its thumb rubbing circles in the palm of Jon’s right.

_**And talk.** _

Jon felt the twitch of a will other than his tug at his legs. He resumed walking before it could take over. The left hand still trapped the right. He gave up trying to pull the latter loose and climbed back into the pit of resignation that had been his refuge in the time with the cabin. Better to put the other stages of grief on hold. 

“About what?”

_**Do you like Mary Shelley?** _

Jon did. 

They went from there.


	3. Chapter 3

Time, broken and long and short, passed. Nightmares passed with it. 

The ones passed before already had their marks. Their own avatars of the Extinction, following the Geiger tick of Jon’s tread. 

The Slaughter’s battlefield had been patched over, no longer bleeding, but turning gangrenous with avoidance. 

All fight and massacre had been siphoned away, replaced by the Despot’s influence. Where once there was a war, now there was a city, strangled and beaten into compliance with whatever new rule the Despot decided existed. No one rebelled. No voice was raised except in patriotic fervor as the television showed the Slaughter’s avatars being tortured into grisly nonexistence. 

The Corruption’s sick village had come to an abrupt end. A vaccine, wielded by a single masked—was it a mask?—Pharmacist, was distributed to all. At a price. 

And when the next illness came—if it came, for it was a very subtle illness, starting with the signs of a cold, an allergic sniffle, or nothing at all—the Pharmacist had medicine for that too. At a higher price. Always a higher one. First in currency, then in blood, then in whatever the Pharmacist felt like taking. The people always gave it, whatever it was. Never enough to kill them—who would buy the medicine then?—but never curing outright. That was saved for the Corrupting avatar itself. Where it had been, there was now only a smear of earth staked through with hypodermic needles, their toxins souring the soil beneath.

The Stranger’s carousel had been dismantled. In its place was the Factory; certainly one of the Extinction’s favorites.

Once, the Factory had been the man-shaped thing sitting in the office. But he had been the Factory since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. The Factory made anything and everything there was to make. It never turned off its lights, never shut down its machinery, never ceased smoking from its crown of chimneys, never stopped producing. Chiefly because its workers never stopped working. The desperate, the hopeless, the providers who needed to provide, the ones missing the proper documents, whatever ‘proper’ may constitute in whatever country they may have met the Factory in. The Factory was not picky. The Factory only nodded its former head, pushed the contract across the desk, and watched them sign their name.

It would watch as the worker failed to watch their name melt on the paper, becoming a number. Then the worker would be in their uniform, standing in their new position, which would soon become the only position. Shifting product, pulling levers, working presses, frantically checking quality, maintaining gears, carting, steering, funneling, printing, smelting, drilling, filling, churning, pumping, cutting, heating, cooling, wrapping, boxing, shipping—whatever the Factory declared the Outside was demanding, they worked to make.

Workers who were sure they must have left the Factory at some point in the last twenty-four hours, perhaps thirty-six, forty-eight at the longest. They must have left, must have returned home to rest, to see their loved ones. They _must_ have.

The workers worked. Worked. Worked. Dropped.

In the time before the Change, they were shucked of their uniforms, the innards carried off to be repurposed in the section of the Factory that saw to packaging fine protein cuts for the hungry masses. The Flesh was not bad, the Factory knew, but sloppy in its preparation. Not so for itself. Professionalism counted in all things. Nowadays, the workers simply awoke in the office. Were they hiring?

Yes, the Factory said. Always.

Meanwhile, the pieces of the Stranger’s carousel, along with the Not-Them’s plastic replacement, were nowhere to be found.

Not only because of the workers’ new mindset; after all, who had time to worry about frilly things like identity and selfhood and faces and all that poetic mush when there was Work to Do?

But because all the gears and glue and precious polyethylene shouldn’t be _wasted_. Whatever specter of a consciousness had existed in those pieces, it had been long since smelted out of them as they were turned into fresh product.

They passed through the rest of the Fears’ patches at a pace Jon attempted to make hasty, but, after realizing the land refused to move any faster for it, fell back into a leisurely amble. With each nightmare, the Extinction slid up to the front of them, stoking that hating flame with each recital of the horrors inside. They would be the one to greet the agent of its destruction and repurposing; its distinctive Extinction mark.

_**This is not forever, Jon,**_ the Extinction always reminded him. _**Only bait. You’ll See.**_

Jon didn’t answer. Only Watched.

Here was the Desolation, sullied by, of all things, an entity made from a shambling field of flora.

No matter how many waves of heat and disintegration tore at it, the Implacable Green returned, stronger than before. She turned wax to soil, spores landed and buried in avatar’s cinder-pores, making a home out of their fertile anatomy. Flowers of sickly, toxic colors bloomed in eyes and lungs. Vines snarled in the remainder of bones. Moss furred and choked away their dying screams. Trees cradled the humans who remained, making them vegetative in their implacable Forest, as enduring and unyielding as they were when growing around abandoned bikes and cars. The Green would always prevail, once humanity ceased to pester her. The Green swallowed all the works of man. The Green would be there not a day after the upgraded chimps killed themselves off, proof-positive of their insignificance in the face of nature. Patient as any sighing Mother, just as secretly glad to be rid of her squalling, bloodsucking children.

The Dark was simple. 

Darvaza Crater was only the most well-known of deathless chemical fires, not the most prolific. An ex-chemist and forever-arsonist who had fallen in love with the spectacle and eternity of unnatural conflagration. A scientific disaster gone horribly right, forever and ever, amen. He was the Blaze was the Explosion was the Corrosion, and when he strolled into the Dark, its avatars died squealing in a truly-blinding wash of light.

The Vast was tricky.

How did one conquer a Fall? Conquer Too Much Space? 

Answer: with Development. Rather, Virulence. 

There was as much fear in humanity’s constant expansion as there was hope. It would, left unchecked, blanket Earth and all its last, struggling hidden places with its concrete-glass hive and extend Upwards, Outwards, colonizing any world that made the mistake of wearing a habitable atmosphere. A walking talking mold that filled all Spaces and, regardless of the threat of a Fall, stabbed whole groves of skyscrapers up into the clouds for the sake of making more room for themselves. 

Simon Fairchild’s light old bones went into the foundation of the first complex, the Architect paving the old man’s pieces in evenly as his thousand other hands began work on cluttering the sky.

The Flesh became fossil fuel for a legion of ravenous automobiles with all manner of gristle in their grilles. 

The Boneturner was converted to wailing petrol by a woman with siphon nails and a laugh like a revving engine. Once he was finished, the Roadkill drove on, fresh pavement rushing ahead of her truck’s tires no matter where she sped, vomiting poison smoke, plugging clouds and lungs with filthy heat.

Said asphalt would cut a road past the Buried, where the Vista was taking hold. 

The Landscapist was busily digging, leveling, tearing up, flattening down, arranging, and rearranging the environment and the helplessly churning ground with it. To save on labor, he had dug up all of the Buried’s victims and thrust tools in their hands, thrusting others behind the controls of machines designed to scar natural terrain. He barked at them with his pruned topiary maw to get to work, damn them, they were on a schedule, move their lazy carcasses, the dirt nap was over, move, move, _move!_ They all jumped to work, sweating in fresh, aching, constant motion, none of them even aware they were mutilating the grasping soil and stone that had caged them.

The Hunt was endangered sooner rather than later. 

As was expected when the Huntsman showed up. A misnomer, Jonah Magnus would have called it. For while he did seek, and did prey upon other creatures, there was little to nothing of actual hunting required in his methods. Nor did he relish the chase even a fraction as much as the kill and its resultant reward. Not food, of course, nor clothing for himself. 

“No, not at all, lads,” the Huntsman chuckled to his ever-growing Hunting party. 

A party that had been running, chasing, fleeing, bleeding for as long as they could remember, but were now somehow straddling things pretending to be horses or else holding the leashes of things pretending to be dogs. Drone cameras in camouflage paint buzzed in insect loops around and above them, their lenses living eyes, sighting their quarry without ever having to track it. The party held guns, and saws, and cameras to better document their imminent prizes. 

“Lord, no!” laughed the Huntsman, his bullet casing teeth flashing. “I just thought the den could do with another head on the wall, is all. A little something to tie the room together. Perhaps some furs for the fashion trade; those bleeding hearts can rail all they like about fur being murder, but the synthetic stuff just doesn’t compare to a true pelt. And, God, the ivory, lads! That business is still booming even now! Now hustle! We’ve only slain twenty of the things in an hour, as one reckons an hour. We’re falling behind. Come along,” he crowed, rushing into the rapidly dwindling Wilderness where the avatars who had thought themselves Predators and Pack now found themselves dead and dying prey, “pints on me once we finish!”

In the distance, the Extinction stood in Jon’s boots and watched with Jon’s eyes as the party rushed in drooling, confused glee after the Huntsman. To the tape recorder they finished:

“Even if it takes a century, perhaps less, they would finish. The party has erased many species already. Dozens. By nightfall, should night ever fall, they will have ended at least a hundred. A-hunting they will go.”

Jon took himself back.

“End recording.” He sighed. “What does this mean for Daisy, Sum?”

_**Nothing, now. When was the last time you Saw her? Or Basira?** _

“…They’re in the Panopticon too.”

_**More padding for the meat shield. Who else do you feel waiting in there?** _

“Oliver Banks. And, I could be wrong—,”

_**You aren’t.** _

“—Annabelle Cane. The End and the Web. Saving the most intimidating for last.”

_**They would. They have to resort to drastic measures after what we did with the last payphone Annabelle Cane put in front of us.** _

“What you did, Sum. I won’t say she didn’t deserve it, but did you have to make it quite so…graphic?”

_**She already had a hole in her skull. What are a few radiation burns?** _

“It was more than that. I know what you did, because I felt us doing it. I-I can still feel it.”

_**Yes. I’m sure the Spider feels it too. Though not with so enjoyable an edge as we do.** _

Images of the nest of spiders that made up Annabelle Cane’s interior flowed pleasantly from the Extinction and into Jon’s cringing forebrain. A parade of irreversibly malformed, agonized Annabelle-arachnids limping and pleading with tiny, voiceless cries to their Mother of Puppets as Annabelle herself moaned in her warped flesh. 

Not an alteration to inspire terror, but nausea. Not an upgrade, but a deformity. 

The Extinction turned the vision over dreamily in their mental hands.

“You could have just killed her,” Jon muttered.

_**Like swatting a bug. Or holding a magnifying glass over an ant, as you did with the Not-Them. Yes. I could have. But I am notorious for slower methods. Unrelated, do you know how many days it took to die of radiation poisoning following direct exposure, pre-Change?** _

“About two days,” Jon Knew. “Sometimes less.”

_**And seeing as time still remains broken, those two days could take her two years. Or decades. Or centuries. And all the time she will be deteriorating, the pain turning up in her bloating, blistering, festering anatomy, the body crumbling and dying despite all the promises her Mother made, the Designs woven, the perfect plotting of the Web. There is no countermeasure for such a thing. No coaxing, no coercing, no level of manipulation that exists to outmaneuver the brainless trudge of deterioration and decay.** _

_**But Mr. Banks is there, isn’t he? He could stave off The End. And he is. I am there as well as here, living in her traitor flesh, and I feel his grim hand clutching her life in his fist. He is refusing to let her be dead. Instead, she is only dying. Dying, hurting, prone and twitching on the wreckage of hers and the Spider’s machinations.** _

_**He holds her there, just as feeble, just as** _ **desperate _as the half-living victims that Terminus once had him presiding over alongside Tova McHugh, harvesting their endless cycling of Ending. He waits. Silent as death._**

**_Finally, in Annabelle Cane’s clever, hemorrhaging mind, she makes the proper calculation. She knows what he is waiting for. So she clambers up on all her legs, those that work and those that don’t, and crawls to him._ **

**_Jonah Magnus looks on from some murky distance, out of focus, as much worried for what this portends for him as he is enraptured by the Sight of it. Annabelle Cane, avatar of the Web, looks at Oliver Banks with all her remaining eyes; the ones not gone to blind pus._ **

**_“Kill me,” she says in her whisper-voice. “I order you to kill me.”_ **

**_An order, of course, because even if the Spider rarely speaks to its puppets face-to-face, it is made of nothing but control. It never asks. It commands. Just as she had wished to command Martin Blackwood if he’d lifted that phone in the trench; a puppet to cage the Archivist with._ **

**_Just as she wished to take the risk of speaking to you directly in order to coerce or cajole, but to ultimately control you. Even so strong, even powered by the Eye, at least she could manipulate you. She’d always had a knack for it, her and her kin. She could make a powerful puppet of Jonathan Sims. Only an avatar, no matter how strong._ **

**_But a Fear?_ **

**_Ha, no. Not now, Spider. Not ever._ **

**_And so, by dint of the nightmare logic that the Web planned so meticulously to make the natural law, I answered the phone. I let her whisper her orders, saying nothing, but seeping down the line and through the receiver and into her clever, silken skull. And the rest of her too. She never did bother to hang up; too busy screaming, clawing at her ballooning, tumor-bubbling head._ **

**_Now she is there, in the present that could never have been planned for, giving her last order._ **

**_“Kill me,” she demands._ **

**_Oliver Banks, growing the tiniest smile for the first time since the Change called him to work, obliges._ **

**_Annabelle Cane is dying, dying—_ **

“Dead. She’s dead.” Jon scrubbed his hands over his face. “God.”

_**Another of mankind’s most destructive inventions. One of my favorites.** _

“Yeah.” He turned to face the Panopticon again. The countryside was ending. What had once been civilization was on the horizon, ex-London with it. The walk resumed. “The End,” he sighed. “How do you beat The End? Humanity’s never made anything to counter that. Never will, hopefully.”

_**That one is a surprise.** _

“Mmhmm. And my friends? Is their condition going to be a surprise too? You had your eyes, or senses, or Self, or whatever in there while you were taking Annabelle apart. Did you notice them?”

The Extinction was silent.

“Sum?”

The Extinction manifested mental teeth and gritted them together.

_**They are not dead. They are not harmed. They are afraid.** _

“Anything else? Like, where they are in the Panopticon, their actual condition, anything about Martin—,”

_**I have told you all there is worth knowing, Jon. Once inside the Eye, you can Know all the extraneous details you like. Talk about something else. I was enjoying our intercourse on Chambers and Gilman—,** _

“ _Discourse,_ we have gone over this several times, it’s _dis_ course—,”

The Extinction wore their best imitation of innocence.

_**They mean the same thing, Jon.** _

“You have been watching humanity since the day they invented language, _you know exactly what it means._ That aside, you are literally living in my head, meaning you know what connotations are tied to it. So stop it.”

They slathered on a heavier layer of innocence.

_**Stop being inside you?** _

Jon put his face in both hands. His face boiled against the palms.

“Oh, God. Look, I get you experimenting with humor and all, trying out all the human accessories—,”

_**I got you to laugh at the Lovecraft theory.** _

The Lovecraft theory: That H.P. Lovecraft’s many New England protagonists and/or victims were mainly racists who were wracked with horror because the otherworldly abominations and their teachings came down to, ‘Yeah, we’re going to take over Earth, make everything look weird, and racism won’t be allowed.’ Then they get devoured. 

Jon had been faking his way through enjoying a cup of tea, the last of a ration the One He Loved had left behind, and wound up snorting the drink out his nose when the Extinction injected a scene of menaced racists shrieking in comical fright as they were un-existed by sighing eldritch horrors.

“Yes,” Jon sighed in the present, “but there are some lines I’d rather you not cross. Innuendo is still one of them.”

_**It hardly means anything, Jon. Copulation isn’t a factor for Entities like me. No breeding necessary. We simply manifest ourselves.** _

“That’s not the point. The point is—,”

_**I know what the point is.**_

The thought fell and clanged hard against the floor of their shared mind, the shell of a bomb just missing detonation. The Extinction hefted a hammer and began idly tapping at the bomb’s front. Clang, clang, clang.

_**Much as you would pretend it’s only a matter of your asexuality, the true reason is the One You Love. Can’t hazard so much as a joke that would imply straying from devotion. Isn’t that right?** _

“Why do you keep doing that?”

_**Doing what?** _

Clang, clang.

“This, what you’re doing right now. Every time I bring up my friends, or, hell, even _think_ of Martin, you get testy. Why?”

_**I have a certain history with their type. You’ll forgive me if I’m not half so forgiving as you when it comes to their shortcomings.** _

Clang.

“What do you mean ‘their type’?”

The Extinction almost laughed.

_**A type not so far removed from the Fears. Self-absorbed. Shunning. Social amongst each other while making a target of their chosen scapegoat; an entity who is just as trapped by their situation as the rest, but is selected for hate and derision by dint of factors they cannot help. Temperament. Mentality. Power. The only difference is that in your, quote, friends’ case, they were lucky enough to find a punching bag in you rather than a ticking timebomb. I put my ‘social circle’ in their place whenever they took a swipe.** _

_**But you crave acceptance, Jon. Friendship. Love. That, coupled with your own self-loathing, made you bend over backwards to paint the cagey, bile-spitting people the Eye and Web surrounded you with as companions rather than fellow inmates and barely-passable allies. Daisy Tonner came the closest out of all of them to being an actual comrade—after you risked your life to rescue her. A Hunter who you were already too simperingly dog-loyal to to even suspect of planning a second murder attempt on you before entering the coffin. Even after that, knowing the monstrous, transitioning hell you were going through, she barely put a sentence’s worth of defense in on your behalf when Basira Hussain and Melanie King came down on you for daring to have your covert fresh meals.** _

_**Which was so very easy for them to do. Both of the latter had decided to put all their ire and blame and suspicion squarely on your head long before your diet became a public health concern. The same could be said for Georgina Barker—,** _

“Don’t you dare—,”

_**I am not the Distortion, Jon. I don’t deal in lies any more than the Eye does. So, here is a Truth for you: they left you out to dry. Georgina Barker and Melanie King both, when you came to them for a mere bit of advice, for guidance, for anything resembling clarity at a moment when you suspected you were either going paranoid or on the edge of disaster, they turned away from you. Because…why, exactly? Their own mental well-being? The desire to not feel spooked and icky and imperiled by the act of exchanging words with you? Not even a statement, mind, but mere patter. They left you with only the Distortion for a confidante, and we both know how that went.** _

_**Oh, Daisy Tonner and Basira Hussain did their duties as a barrier between you and the Hunters and the Not-Them, certainly. Second nature for the latter, first nature to the former. Perfectly cordial so long as they had a monster to take down.** _

_**So you got to rush into the Lonely to rescue the One You Love, your Martin Blackwood, by yourself. Marking you one last time for Jonah Magnus’ scheme. And you did it, of course. You’d made doing the impossible part of your regular routine by then. Even half-starved on paper statements, you cut a path through the Lonely, disintegrated an avatar, undid Martin Blackwood’s mind-rotting despair, and walked him right back out of the fog.** _

_**And, since we are on the subject of Martin Blackwood…** _

Clang-clang-clang!

_**You buckled when the Distortion laughed and claimed you did not deserve him. Claimed you Knew it already. You said nothing in your defense. He said nothing even louder.** _

“Alright, no, it was not like that. You were obviously there for it, so don’t pretend he didn’t also follow Helen’s little pep talk up with—,”

_**Heaps of love and affection and assurances. Yes. ‘She was just following her nature, she couldn’t help it, she’s made of lies, Jon, I know it’s not true, Jon, there-there, Jon.’ Pity he couldn’t bring it up during the actual conversation. But then, he was too busy trying to be friends, wasn’t he? Buddy up to the latest monster to cross his path, the better to avoid enduring the same physical and mental pains you have.** _

“Will you stop painting him like he’s some—,”

_**I am not painting, Jonathan Sims. I am taking a photograph.** _

_**Really, what has Martin Blackwood suffered compared to you? A teary headache from ‘Elias Bouchard.’ Peter Lukas’ so-called company. A single, harmless visit from Simon Fairchild. Mild interest from Annabelle Cane. A pleasant chat had over your head with the Distortion. And you, of course. The One He Loves, his dear, cherished Jon. I will say this much for him: his love does extend very far and does forgive many slights.** _

_**In your early days with the Archives, when you were still clinging to the frail armor of a put-on prickliness—better to rebuff than risk rejection, wasn’t it?—he became infatuated. Your mask slipped too often, showing Jon under Mr. Sims, and he never lost sight of you. As time wore on, pining turned to genuine longing. He was devastated at the news of your coma. Likewise the passing of his cruel bat of a mother; no doubt the woman was as much a blueprint for dealing with monsters as Grandmother Sims was your blueprint for self-hate and acceptance of any scrap of affection you could grab at.** _

_**He was ready to die to save the world from the next ritual. Or from me. Or from whatever. If you were gone, what was the point?** _

_**But then, huzzah, you were back. Alive. Still, he pressed on with his vague mission. He would keep you safe. He would get answers.** _

_**Until he didn’t. Until he was flicked carelessly into the Lonely to bait you. Help, help, save him, Jon. And you did. And you went to your cozy cabin to lay low, all rustic bliss and love. All of this was well and good, apart from one thing.** _

_**The matter of morality versus you staying alive.** _

_**He was the one to rat you out when it was revealed you were taking live statements on the side, after all. Would he have condoned it once the Archives ran out of printed meals? Was there any sort of plan for your well-being after the honeymoon period, Jon? Or were you both content to play pretend until the paper ran out and you were left to starve to death? Do tell.**_

Jon gnawed his tongue a moment. Then:

“We didn’t have a real plan, no. Neither of us wanted to talk about it. Me less than him, really. But sometimes he would sneak it into conversation.” Jon flexed his hands around the pack’s straps, gripping hard. “He offered to make himself into a perpetual statement giver.”

_**…I don’t recall that particular scene, Jon. And I was keeping as close a watch on you as the Eye by then.** _

“Semantics matter, Sum. Bad as I am at catching certain cues, it was hard to miss what Martin was getting at.”

An image was dug up from Jon’s mind and tossed at the Extinction like an incriminating Polaroid. The Extinction picked it up the way one would a snot rag. 

Here were Jon and Martin in bed, close and comforting, both reading. Sometimes quiet, sometimes aloud, sometimes laughing at something particularly poorly-written. Here was Martin going quiet and pensive, his mouth still trying stubbornly to be a smile.

There was talk of statements. Of dietary requirements. And…

Martin: “How many statements are there in the Archives?”

Jon: “…Why do you ask?”

“Curious.”

“Why are you curious?”

More talk. Less soft. Less curious.

“If—,” Martin started, stopped. Restarted: “If a paper statement was written immediately after the writer experienced it, would that be a closer equivalent to a live statement?”

“In my experience, yes. So long as the statement was from present day and not some backlog from earlier years and centuries. Why?”

“Would it matter if—if it was the same person giving multiple statements? Just experiencing a bunch of scary run-ins with the Fears? Even if they, ah, sought them out? Hypothetically?”

“Martin.”

“Would it work with live sta—?”

“ _Martin._ ” A pause. “No.”

“It’s a possibility.”

“It is not.”

“A last resort, then. If we can’t figure another—,”

“We will.”

“Maybe. But it’s always good to have a plan B.”

“That isn’t plan B. It isn’t even plan Z. Because that is not an option.”

“Neither is you risking your life, getting chewed up by eldritch horrors that have no right to exist in a sane world, and dragging me out of another dimension, just for you to kill yourself by refusing to eat what’s available—Jon? Jon.” 

Jon had been out of the bed, then the room. Martin had followed him outside. Out to the porch. There had been no row, no proper shouting. Not even talk. Martin had just folded himself around Jon like a living shawl and held him tight. Jon had turned against him and embraced him back. Another look, another bout of measuring each other. Still no ground given. No easy battles.

But those battles weren’t for now. 

They’d held onto that now as long as they could.

End scene.

“Well?” Jon huffed in the present. “Care to make a reassessment?”

The Extinction regarded the memory another moment. Then flicked it back from whence it came.

_**No, I wouldn’t.** _

“What!?”

_**What?** _

“Your whole thing with Martin was about him supposedly having a quibble with me taking fresh statements and starving from a lack of print. Now you know he was willing to literally feed himself to me, and you’re still mad at him?”

_**I’m not mad.** _

“You’re certainly not happy! Not even—I don’t know, content, ambivalent, anything resembling placid with him. What for? Why, when your grudge against the others stems from you overlaying your own issues with the Fears onto them, making mountains out of a few microaggressions given under stress that no rational person could hope to prepare for? You don’t like my friends because you think they were ‘too mean’ to really be my friends—,”

_**They were. If they’re in a condition to address you directly when we reach the Panopticon, I suspect they’ll have whole speeches’ worth of bile to fling at you.** _

“No worse than what I’ve been telling myself.”

_**Yes, and you have no right to attack yourself either. Or do you consider it some kind of deranged social activity? ‘If I hate me along with everyone else, technically I’m part of the group!’ Is that it, Jon?** _

“That,” Jon’s cheeks burned, twitching in the usual poor attempt at a poker face. “That is not what we’re talking about.”

_**It really should be—** _

“We’re talking about Martin and why you seem to hate him more than the people who you’re so sure hate me. Why is that, Sum? Is he _too_ nice somehow? Too moral? Do you just not like his taste in knitwear? What is it about him, specifically, that annoys you so much?”

The Extinction lifted the hammer.

_**He loves you. That, I do not hate.** _

The Extinction swung the hammer down.

_**But he is the One You Love, and that I do.** _

Boom.

It took Jon a moment. Perhaps several moments, if one were trying to measure by the old version of time. Never one to put together this particular kind of puzzle easily, was Jonathan Sims. The Extinction waited patiently. Even enjoyed some of the sparks that came off of Jon’s mind as it tried to do the math required to accept the logical conclusion of the Extinction’s words. They wouldn’t have been surprised if smoke started pouring from his ears.

Eventually, the realization processed in full and Jon almost tripped over his own bootlaces as it fell into place. He made small, amusing semi-sounds that didn’t quite make the leap to coherent sentences. Ditto for any mental dialogue. The Extinction waited through that too. But, because someone had to say something:

_**I was surprised too, for the record. Another part of my Changing, I believe. Evolution. Perhaps I even conditioned myself to make this specific leap. The Fears are Fears are Fears, and any additional emotions or reactions they may exercise are purely self-serving. I think the Eye may be my precursor in terms of exercising a fondness that instills an urge to exert effort. It is fixated on you and your antics; it would not begrudge its favorite avatar a little smiting on those rare occasions you called directly on its power. But that is the love for a pet.** _

_**This is—I think—equal to what you feel for Martin Blackwood. It certainly inspires a new spectrum of hates. Protective hate, envious hate. It’s a different flavor compared to the usual spite. And there is the emotion itself to consider.** _

_**I wonder if it is so strong because of that spite. My desire to be antithetical to my kin. Objectively, it’s utterly alien to want to throw myself into such a strange, flailing, illogically human compulsion. There aren’t even that many humans who experience it. Definitely not at my level of intensity, nor as comparatively quick. I’d equate it to that fairy tale lie of ‘love at first sight,’ the folklorist’s polite mask for ‘lust at first sight,’ only our timeframe makes it true.** _

_**I observed you for a blink’s worth of time, Jon, and that was enough to like you. Once I was within you, I had access to your mind. The alchemic makeup of what you’d call a soul. And I fell in love in the space of a millisecond. Love. Love.** _

_**I think you may need to sit down, Jon.** _

Jon didn’t argue, mainly because he was currently losing the fight with gravity and balance. If he did not sit soon, he would fall over. He found a stone to make his seat and lowered himself in what felt like slow motion. His mouth was still closed for business, ditto the frantic incoherent sputtering of his mind. The Extinction waited some more.

“I…I really have no idea what do with this, Sum. I never have, even in less, ah, e-extreme scenarios.”

The Extinction couldn’t dispute that. They had come across a memory of Georgina Barker somewhere, in which Jon had been genuinely baffled when she’d tried to introduce her boyfriend to some of her non-uni friends. What boyfriend? Cue a long, red-faced conversation in which it was explained to him that all those one-on-one friendly outings, embraces, kisses on the cheek, et al, were, in fact, intended to be romantic in nature. Jon had been both embarrassed at his obliviousness and pleasantly surprised. 

It was always a surprise to him. 

While Tim Stoker had been the resident heartbreaker of the Archives, Jon had obliviously snared an intern or two as well, though they never lingered long in his department. The Eye and the Web needed to keep certain cast slots open for more action-ready members. Then, of course, Martin Blackwood had happened, and he’d been clueless then too.

Now, here he was, hearing this latest confession of affection. Only now the stakes were higher. Catastrophically so.

At least this was what Jon assumed. But, while the Extinction might have been interested to see how he would tap-dance around the incendiary nature of this new dynamic, they had no interest in seeing him stumble over a we’re-better-as-friends speech. And they both preferred getting down to facts.

So.

_**There’s no reason to choke on ‘It’s not you, it’s me,’ here, Jon. I know you do not love me. That is not my role. I know I do not even rate as a true friend in your perspective, nor should I. I am the Extinction. I am the influence that has seeded avatars whose entire purpose was to eat away at humanity’s stability and tease the Fears into action. Granted, it was for the long game, and they are going to work on the Fears’ offshoots themselves now, but the point stands—I am one of the most prolific killers among my kind.** _

_**Accustomed as you are to making do with caustic companions, there is only so far your extremely loose definition of friendship can extend.** _

Jon sucked a breath through his teeth. His hands fumbled with each other.

“That’s not—I mean, yes, I’ve got a rather jagged track record when it comes to my options for friends, but I…” A lump moved in his throat. “I’ve gotten a little out of you too. Not a ton. Not everything. But bits have come through. Very early bits.”

_**How early?** _

Jon recited, “But what about you? You are Knowledge itself. Awful Knowledge, yes, but to Know you must have a mind. …Right?”

_**That is early. How much else do you Know?** _

“A lot. Enough to recognize more of me than I’d like. Enough to understand where this whole operatic apocalyptic mess is coming from.” Jon tightened his hands in each other. They sweated. “And enough to make an educated guess about what you have planned after you destroy the Fears.”

Oh, dear. Here it was. 

_**Don’t sell yourself short, Jon. You put two and two together the moment the Eye let you Know who I was. Adelard Dekker simply had the roster wrong. Fears first.** _

“Humans second. Right.” The hands were so tight the fingernails cut in. Crescents showed on Jude Perry’s burn and on Jane Prentiss’ maggoty scars. “Right.” His eyes burned now. Every inch of him rattled, so narrow in his own clothes, even filled to brimming with the terrified meal of the world.

_**Jon.** _

Jon shook harder. His brow now rested on the stiff, knuckled stone of his clasped hands. Wetness rolled down through his stubble and fell from his chin.

_**Jon?** _

The hands finally unfolded so that he could clamp the claws of them in his hair and dig into his scalp. More tears gushed. Harsh half-breaths shuddered out of him. 

_**…I wish this didn’t hurt you. I’m honestly shocked that it is. All the stages of grief have been passed and re-passed. You’ve invented knew ones, I think, and gone through them too. You feel so much, Jon. For all you try to put on a show of disdain, you are made of so much empathy. Augmented to the point of torture by your own addiction to guilt. But Jon?** _

_**Please, please understand this. Ask the Eye if you feel Knowing will make it sink in: this is not your fault. None of it is. Nor can you stop any of what’s coming. To blame yourself for this is to blame yourself for a tornado or a star dying. Sometimes there simply is no way to win.** _

_**It would have been a less despondent time for you pre-Change if you’d had the time and temperament to recognize that. All your available choices, whether planned by Jonah Magnus and the Web or entirely incidental, were universally awful. You have no choices now, and still, the assorted outcomes that chance may drag you into are awful. Less pick your poison and more pick your Purgatory. Even now, I feel you trying to paint yourself as the villain or the weak link or the pawn or this or that.** _

_**I want so badly for you to move on from this mindset. This overdose of humanity that you keep beating yourself with will only make what comes next worse. You know that even without asking the Eye.** _

_**The Fears will go. Then humanity. I will not make you watch your ‘friends’ and the One You Love perish, but know they will go quickly. Painlessly, if I can manage it.** _

_**Time will pass again, proper time. Because you will still be you, I expect there will be other stages to cycle through. Hate and mourning and fear and tears and around again. Centuries. Millennia. Eons. It will all pass. And someday, someplace, in the midst of all that time, I will get you to laugh at something. Or to roll your eyes; if we still have eyes by then. Evolution might have moved us above such things. Regardless:** _

_**A crack will appear in your marathon of grief. I will make that crack bigger.** _

_**You will fight it, I think. You will cling to your penance and misery like a life raft the same way you’re doing now. As if your conscience is doing anything to you but what Helen did. It provides an illusion of comfort, Jon, not the real thing. Not in a situation like this.** _

“Stop,” Jon said. It came out on a jagged breath.

_**Not until you accept reality, Jon. Not until you stop hurting yourself with the daydream of having some way to fight the inevitable and you just need to think your way into discovering it. Once the Event comes and goes, you will torment yourself with thinking that solution must have been there, somewhere, and you missed it. But that solution does not exist. You could no sooner drink the ocean than stop me in this. Let it go.** _

“Shut up,” he hissed. He didn’t unlock his jaw to say it.

_**No. Jon—,** _

Jon sucked in a sudden, huge breath and leapt to his feet. The Extinction cringed in premonition.

“ _Ceaseless Watcher!_ ” Jon screamed to the Eye. “You Know what is coming! You Know what I’m bringing to you! Turn your Gaze on me! _Stop me!_ End me now if you can!”

The Eye only continued to Stare. 

“Destroy me, you evil ball of vitreous humor! You Know what this is, so _end me_ , damn you! Come on!”

Lidless, mouthless, the Eye still managed to grin.

Knowledge fell neatly into Jon’s head. The Extinction braced again as Jon turned the message over. It was wordless, but full of Fact and Intent. 

The gist was that, yes, the Eye Knew what the Extinction was coming to do. It Knew what the Extinction planned to do after. It Knew it would never get another show like it, provided the Eye and its Fearful kin were doomed to be extinguished. It Knew it was bored already of the same meals of rerun terror in the Changed world. 

And Jon should Know by now that it would never dare intentionally destroy him. He provided far too much entertainment value, after all. Its Archivist. Its Key. Its Harbinger.

Jon would be the last thing the Eye saw. This was a decree that bordered on Fact itself.

In short, ha, no. No exits for you, Jonathan Sims. On with the show.

Jon absorbed all of this in less than a heartbeat. And screamed. 

“ _Useless goddamn voyeur!_ ” He whirled around waving his arms, shouting in all directions. “Come on! There’s thirteen more of you, isn’t there!? Only one of us! What the hell are you waiting for!?”

_**They’re cowards, Jon. They remember what I was like behind the Door. That, and they’re no doubt fretting over the exposure of my avatars, trying to stave off the spread of their damage. And the Eye is Watching. Neither Fear nor avatar will dare touch you.** _

“I’m not talking to you!”

_**You are. You have been. I said before; you do not consider me a friend, let alone your Love. But I also believe that the former was only through a distinct effort on your part. I have all the memories of our exchanges preserved in me, Jon. All the neurochemical responses and emotional radiation and the crumbs of thought you let dribble out of your side of the mind. And do you know something?** _

_**You enjoyed talking with me far more than you liked to admit. I know, because you processed that exact same thought every three estimated hours. It popped up like clockwork. A constant needle ready to poke holes in the likewise constant rise of endorphins when you fell too much in rhythm with me, with our chatter. It was so easy with us, despite everything. Probably due in part to trying not to think of what was around the corner. Ignoring the obvious.** _

_**Now that the band-aid’s been ripped off, all your saved-up fear and vitriol is pouring out. But no matter how much bile you smear, it won’t cover up the fact that you were…becoming friendly. Not on purpose, I know. You actively tried to stop yourself from liking me and my company—but it happened anyway. Because, to quote the One You Love, ‘Who else is there?’** _

_**You can admit it now and save time, or wait another thousand years, but the fact remains: we click. Whether you’ve liked liking me or not, we click. Already, you miss the time before now. That sensation of being understood, of being engaged with positively for your own sake, not as some ragdoll to be tossed around by inhuman whims. Of having someone who simply liked you and you liked back. It’s all here, Jon. Plain as a transcript.** _

_**But humanity’s well-being takes precedent, of course. Your moral outrage.** _

_**I want to be patient with that. I’ve always been a master at waiting. The long game.** _

_**But I hate seeing this, Jon. I hate seeing you do this runaround all over again.** _

_**So, skip it. You’ve earned the right to acceptance. A resignation to peace rather than further depression. Let yourself have that. Please. Please.** _

“Fuck you.”

_**Jon—,** _

Jon unshouldered his pack and began digging in its pockets. He came up with a knife. Not the dull one Daisy Tonner had once found on him, but a proper steak knife taken from the cabin’s kitchen. 

_**Jon, I know what you tried in the cabin while Martin slept. You know the cut will only heal. You don’t have to do this to yourself again.** _

“Who said I’m going for the neck?”

The Extinction bristled as they spotted a free-floating bit of trivia scuttling across Jon’s mind-- _Between second and third or third and fourth, most likely to puncture the left lung, pierce the heart—_ and Jon aimed the point of the knife at his left side.

_**It won’t work.** _

“Then I hope this hurts.”

Jon brought the knife back two inches and plunged it toward the ribcage with both hands.

The point froze a second before it could penetrate his shirt. His hands quivered, losing their strength around the handle.

“Stop it!”

_**No.** _

“Let go! You said yourself—,”

His hands snapped open. The knife fell to the grass. Jon almost didn’t notice it. He was somewhat preoccupied by the increasing difficulty of keeping his free will intact.

“What are you doing?”

_**You can’t be trusted with yourself right now, Jon.** _

“No! No, we agreed, I get to be in control between those nightmares a-and your little avatar check-ins, you don’t get to—,”

_**Take back the courtesies I’ve granted you? The illusion of an option when you are no more than an ant beside me and my power? Yes, Jon, I do. I am. You can have your body back when I can trust you not to injure yourself in some desperate ploy to stop me. Or hurt me. Likely both. It doesn’t matter. Come on.** _

“ _No!_ God, just _stop!_ ” The words weren’t being spoken so much as shrieked. The Extinction wasn’t even sure if he was speaking to them or the air. “Stop this! stop all of this, just—just get out of me, stop it, stop it, stop it, I won’t do this, stop it—!”

But it was happening. Had happened. Jon clawed and thrashed as the Extinction ushered him to the back of his skull. The cage closed around him—as soft as the Extinction could make it, padded with what little serotonin they could find in the place—and locked him in. 

Jon exploded.

If his reaction to losing Martin was on the level of Operation Centerboard, this was at the level of MAD being initiated by every nuclear country at once. The Extinction recoiled from the strength of it. Not merely an Archival eruption, but a tsunami of all the worst colors of the human spectrum for emotion. Fear and hate and sorrow and a bottomless well of marrow-deep wretchedness all poured out of him at once, drowning anything else of Jonathan Sims beneath its depths.

It was worse than the day the Door opened. 

Wave on wave on wave on wave on wave on wave on wave on wave on wave of misery. 

This was Jon at the point of epiphany. This was, the Extinction was surprised and nauseous to realize, Jon at the point of _acceptance._ He Knew the Extinction didn’t lie. He Knew there was nothing he could do to stop them. He Knew there was no exit, no alternative, no version of events where he might miraculously evict the Extinction from him. He Knew there was no way for him to even die and be rid of himself. Of the endless nightmare that had replaced his life.

He Knew, not because he’d asked the Eye, but because the Eye had helpfully informed him of its own volition. 

So Jon went on, flailing and weeping and howling in himself, caught in a perpetual anguishing loop.

It would not be forever, the Extinction told themselves. Tried to shout over Jon.

It would not be forever, because nothing could be forever. They were the essence of Ending, of Change, Terrible or otherwise. Jon would calm. Jon would weather the Events to come. Jon would love them back someday. He would have to.

The Extinction tried to picture that far-off day, a Future when days existed again, a tally to be counted by the inheritors they would grow like crops in the ages to come, and imagined Martin Blackwood’s words in their mouth:

“Who else is there?” they would ask Jon. 

No one, of course. No one but them. 

In his cage, Jon caught wind of the thought; the daydream. Hearing it, Jon went abruptly quiet. And it was worse. Much, much worse, though the Extinction could not put into words why.

Jon glared at them through the symbolic bars of the cage. Then he got up on his tottering mental legs and walked away. Back, back, back, down, down, down, stretching his pen into a cellar into a sub-basement into a pit into—

Oh.

“Jon. Jon, that isn’t necessary. It won’t do anything anyway. Jon?”

But Jon had already descended the steps and found what he was looking for. 

A very familiar coffin. The old words were still gouged on it. DO NOT OPEN.

Jon disobeyed its order, flipping the lid up and crawling inside. It was not a mere figment, the Extinction realized, but an Archived copy of that dark, crushing span of days with Daisy Tonner. A visual statement. 

The Extinction felt him descend once more, burrowing into his own hindbrain, closing the wood and dirt and stone around himself until he was sealed in on all sides. The Buried memory did not even bother to crush him inside it. Not when Jon was doing so much better himself.

_Should have let the worms kill me. Should have let the Not-Them eat my life. Should have told Jude to torch me to wax and ash. Should have made Mike mad enough to splatter me at terminal velocity. Should have let Daisy slit my throat. Should have told Michael to skewer me and not bother with the door. Should have let Nikola harvest me for parts. Should have flipped off the Eye and rolled over into The End. Should have let Trevor and Julia kill another monster. Should have. Should have._

Similar thoughts coiled around and around him. Opened arteries, pills, nooses, bullets. All the self-destructive if-onlys that he had shied away from, half-certain that if he lasted long enough as the budding Archivist, something would get around to killing him anyway. Too much a coward to do it himself. Not until it was too late. Now the world and its people were doomed twice-over. Because of him. 

“That’s not true.”

Because he existed as a catalyst to so many forces of pure, selfish, destructive hate. 

“That isn’t—,”

And now? Now here was the latest round, folks. Once the Fears were shown out, it would be humanity’s turn. A small eternity of blinding terror capped with total annihilation. Because, of course that was how it would go. Of fucking course. What else should he expect? A happy ending? A return to the world-that-was? Anything resembling an improvement rather than a leap to what should have been bedrock, but was only a rug covering a hole that led into another, even worse level of Hell? Ha. Silly of him. He should have Known better.

“Jon…”

So he would stay in here awhile. Down in the Buried where it was him and the Choke. 

At least until that got old, and then he could tunnel his way out into the Unknowing. Nikola really had made a good point—sometimes it was far, far better not Knowing. Perhaps he’d have a chat with Gertrude and Jurgen’s skins. See how Tim’s incinerated corpse was doing. 

After that, hell, why not take a swim in Prentiss’ sea of parasites? See if they couldn’t burrow so thoroughly through his mind that he was more gap than matter?

Then he could take that breathless ride through the laughing Vast as it used him for a gasping yo-yo in the atmosphere.

Then he might waltz right back to Hill Top Road and take a jump into the silken chasm in its cellar. Would Annabelle’s ghost be there? Oh, perhaps it would be Mr. Spider, still waiting on another guest for dinner.

Once he got done having his innards slurped out like a smoothie, then, finally, he could pretend he was back in the coma, fleeing from the dreamt Eye and chasing after Oliver Banks’ shadow, please, please, he took it back, kill him, End him, he took it back…

And on and on he’d go through all the treats and terrors the Fears had gifted him. His own internal Archive where he could get lost and distant and as far away as possible from himself and the Terrible Change that was soon to make the world—somehow—even worse than it was now. Again, all thanks to Jonathan Sims, and the latest, greatest, predictable, implacable, egotistical Fear to use him as a cudgel to beat in humanity’s brains with. 

With that, the coffin’s lid slammed shut. 

“Jon.”

Nothing. Jon was present, Jon existed, but Jon was closed off. Do Not Open. Do Not Touch.

“Jon, you know this won’t change anything. It won’t get you past any of your grief. The sooner you allow yourself to process, the sooner you can be happy. You can allow yourself that much. After all you have done, all that has been done to you, you deserve that much. Jon?”

Jon remained Buried. The Extinction thought he may even be dozing, as much as he could do so after being altered into a state of permanent sleeplessness. Autopilot, the Extinction guessed. A shot of psychic Novocain.

“Jon, you can’t stay that way forever. You won’t be able to maintain it. You Know that, don’t you?”

Nothing.

The Extinction sighed with Jon’s mouth. 

“Fine. I’ll be here when you’re ready. However many millennia that may take you, Jon.”

They shouldered Jon’s bag and resumed the walk towards what had been London. Jon was human more than anything else, no matter what tweaks the Eye made to him. He craved interaction. Any interaction. He would crack by the time they reached the Panopticon, most likely. Perhaps earlier.

The Extinction was patient. They could wait.

“Jon, I swear on Ellison’s grave, I will do it if you don’t say something right now.”

Broken or no, time was still passing. It had been an estimated week between Jon’s seclusion and now. Now, when the Extinction was aiming their nuclear essence at a patch of the Corruption’s territory. A grotesque scene where the people were forced to turn over and over again into insects which disgusted them most. Cockroaches and flies and mantises and beetles and worms all melted in with fragments of their former humanity. 

The Extinction was making ready to snap their fingers and erase the whole vista in a shutter-flash of radiation. Instant extermination. No monologue necessary. Unless:

“I mean it. Say something, or they’re dead. Men, women, children, and arthropods alike.”

From Jon’s side of the skull, more silence. He had moved through his internal Archive to sit in his old office, nodding along to Jurgen Leitner’s bloodied corpse as the latter listed all his shortcomings in alphabetical order. Gertrude Robinson’s far drier corpse had listed them in numerical order. Gerard Keay’s ghost had dropped in to remind him that dying really had been the better option, just in case Jon had forgotten. Jon hadn’t but he’d thanked the specter for the recap anyway. Sasha James—her face still an unknowable blur, but her voice coming in clear—popped in to let him know she was still dead. Tim Stoker did the same. Jon scribbled a note to himself; yes, nearly forgot, thank you.

The Extinction cooked Jon’s skin with fever. Their eyes sizzled in Jon’s sockets. 

“Jon, I’m going to count back from ten. If you don’t have something to say to me by then, this spot turns into a glass parking lot. And since this is the theme you’re running on, same as always, yes, that will be because of you too. Ready?”

Jon swapped Jurgen Leitner out for what had once been Daisy Tonner. She barely fit in the imaginary office, being a huge, lupine thing the size of a rhino. But she managed to squeeze in and to growl-grunt out a fresh bit of guilt for him. Jon nodded along.

“Ten. Nine. Eight. Seven.”

Daisy Tonner was switched out for Martin Blackwood.

“Sixfivefourthreetwo—,”

Jon sighed. He got up from his chair, walked around the desk, and opened the door. When he looked out it was through the bars of the cage. 

The Extinction waited.

Jon let them wait. 

“Well?”

Jon only looked. And asked, wordlessly, what difference it would make if they died now or later. Asked why they were being so impatient. Asked why he would ever give them anything they wanted of him if he could keep it to himself. This one, single, miniscule victory. Funny, wasn’t it? All this mess starting because he’d been tricked and trapped into being unable to shut up when he most needed to, and now, look. Here he was, finally, _finally_ being a proper thorn in a Fear’s side by giving the silent treatment.

He could almost laugh.

Instead, Jon slipped back inside his office and closed the door.

The Extinction stood in dumb shock for minutes or hours. The Corruption’s victims went on squeal-chittering in their constantly rewinding horror. From behind a brick half wall, the avatar responsible for babysitting the site peered with six cautious, scheming eyes. Without looking, the Extinction flicked a crumb of themselves in his direction. Cronenberg could not have orchestrated a grislier demise for Goldblum’s Fly. The Extinction stormed off almost before he finished his insectile death rattle.

They stormed all the way inside the building proper, where the rest of the miserable hive was wailing and chittering. A thought-message was sent out.

**PRECISION. BRING THE PHARMACIST TO OUR LOCATION. IMMEDIATE CURE AND EVICTION REQUIRED.**

A moment later, one of the walls grew a new, gleaming white door. The keypad unlocked and the door opened on a long, straight, sterile-bright hall. There stood Precision and Pharmacist, the one smiling, and the other grinning as best they could with a face that was a paper mask. 

“You rang, sir?”

“Yes.” They waved at the assorted creepy crawly complex tenants. “These need to be rehumanized and funneled out of this building. Drop them in a slum, in an open field, doesn’t matter. Just make sure they don’t have even half a second to be grateful for their cures before they discover how high the cost is, at the same time they realize they’re about to be homeless. Keep them scraping and scrambling.”

“Oh yes, sir,” the Precision chimed. “Obviously.”

“Wouldn’t have it any other way, Mr. Sims,” the Pharmacist hummed, the fingers that were needles glistening and refilling with just the right not-quite-cure. “Shouldn’t take long at all. Just need a sturdy enough point to pierce the carapaces, you know.” He beckoned to the squalling colony with one hypodermic hand at the Precision’s halls. “Right this way, everyone. The doctor will see you shortly.”

The people who were insects who were neither all lifted their antennae as one and surged in the door. The Precision pulled a face as they went.

“I suppose I’ll be sending you the cleaning bill.”

“Oh, that’s hardly fair, Ms. Burroughs. They can’t help having all those extra feet, tracking all that extra filth.”

“Well, I’m not mopping and shampooing thirty kilometers’ worth of corridors myself.”

“See if the Factory has any janitorial staff to spare, then. They’re always looking for Work…”

The pair of them kept making noises at each other. Shop talk, patter, playacting. The Extinction stared at them, at the still-rushing procession of ex-humans, at the avatars again. And discovered something odd.

They couldn’t decide which sight disgusted them more.

They tightened Jon’s hands into fists, trying to scour the thought out of themselves. It wouldn’t go. In fact, the scrubbing only seemed to spread it, make it bigger. 

They _did_ know which party disgusted them more. And it wasn’t the Kafkaesque parade. 

Why was that?

The Extinction could guess. 

Jon’s fists were tightened again, the nails nearly cutting into his palms. Jon himself remained shut behind his office door.

The Extinction tried not to think, not to know, not to connect the dots, not to consider why they were emptying the building in the first place, not to—

“Sir?”

The Extinction blinked. Both Precision and Pharmacist were looking at them. They weren’t smiling, but peering up at them with owlish wonder. Not worried, exactly, but confused.

“What?” they bit out.

“Your eyes, sir. You’re, ah…”

The Pharmacist gestured his needle fingers under where his own eyes had once been, now only a fused set of splash-resistant goggles melted to his sockets.

The Extinction realized Jon’s cheeks were wet. They raised a hand to Jon’s face and swiped some dampness from it. Not tears, they saw. 

Tar. Oil. Ink. 

The last of the Corruption’s victims wriggled over the Precision’s threshold. 

“Go,” whispered the Extinction. More a breath than a word.

“Pardon, sir, didn’t catch that.”

“I said. Go.”

“Oh. Well, are you certain there was nothing else you needed, sir? This place would make a lovely addition to our Estate holdings. The Landscapist could do wonders with the exterior, I’m sure. Get some of the Pharmacist’s patients doing double-duty, working off their payments with a little hard labor.”

“I was thinking of setting up another door to a Clinic, actually, one of those places that charges you just to sit in the lobby—,”

“I. Said.” The Extinction turned to face them in full. They felt Jon’s face disappear in the wake of their true shape. A shadow-vision of the Terrible Change in their blazing, hate-colored yellow-black, their voice the Geiger’s tick-tick-clicking going wild with radiation, the sound of them rapidly approaching the detonation itself. “ **GO!** ”

Precision and Pharmacist didn’t bother with a parting yes-sir-right-away-sir before crashing first into each other, then through the door. It slammed shut and faded immediately back into a blank wall. This was a millisecond before the Extinction swung Jon’s fist into it. The moment the knuckles connected with it, the wall was atomized. Several other walls followed after it. So it went for some while, until the Extinction happened to bulldoze their way into a bedroom with a mirror on the wall. 

They saw themselves. All of themselves. 

And hated them.

The Extinction roared, this time not even bothering to exert their power, but hefting up a nearby table lamp and hurling it into the glass. Their reflection fractured in a thousand pieces, but too many shards remained in the frame. They were still there. Still glaring out at themselves in blistering contempt. 

Somewhere inside, Jon had Martin Blackwood pause in his tearfully disappointed diatribe so that he could jam a chair against the imaginary doorknob. Perhaps he’d turn on an imaginary radio and play one of Grifter’s Bone’s hits to be massacred to.

On their side of the skull, the Extinction felt a yellow-black fist slam down on the Big Red Button and blow their endless reservoir of patience into shrapnel.

“Enough,” they hissed, and it was the sound of poisonous steam. They marched up to the mirror’s remains and laid Jon’s hands flat against the cracked glass. “ _Enough_.”

What seemed to be an earthquake suddenly shook Jon’s office. A moment later, the office had been torn apart in a world-killing blast, erasing all its Archived trappings and spectral cast members. Jon only had a moment to register this before the cage eroded to nothing and a titanic hand dripping with toxic waste swung down on him, first swatting him flat, then crushing him in its fist. 

Jon was yanked to the front of himself and flung into his forebrain with a psychic crash. He shuddered back into his body, blinking and shivering. But still not talking.

He almost moved away from the mirror before everything from his neck down disobeyed orders and set him back in position. Hands on the ruined glass, eyes forward. His reflection was not Jonathan Sims. 

The Extinction, still towering, still gaunt, still a distilled Horror of smoldering nuclear power, glowered out at him, their burning yellow-black hands splayed palm-to-palm with Jon’s. When their mouth opened, mushroom cloud smoke plumed out. 

**“Enough of this, Jon.”**

Jon kept his lips pursed, but did raise one brow as if to ask: Enough of what?

The Extinction bared burnt teeth and reached down to the root of Jon’s tongue. Jon felt a switch flip someplace in his head and throat at the same time. He fought it another moment. Then:

“Enough-of-what?” he ground out. He spat. “I thought you were happy to play the waiting game.”

**“My entire existence has been waiting. While I could wait, I admit, I don’t have any desire to do it again. Now is my time of Immediacy. The Deadline is coming and the Event is within walking distance of here.”**

“Congratulations. What does that have to do with me? You know, beyond being your tagalong for the rest of eternity whether I like it or not? My opinion doesn’t matter to your grand plans.”

**“It shouldn’t. But the background radiation of your unhappiness is—,”**

“What? Killing the mood? So sorry. I’ll try to mourn the oncoming genocide even quieter.”

**“I don’t want you quiet.”**

“Well, I had my next screaming fit scheduled for later, but if you need to hear it now—,”

**“I want you to be happy. I want you to stop souring everything I’ve planned for with your misery.”**

“Can’t exactly turn it off, Terrible Change. ‘Unhappy’ has been my default since I was a toddler and it’s not about to stop now.”

**“I could Change that, Jon. I could Evolve us to a point where your brain fed you a constant flood of dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, and endorphins. I can do that for you. You’d laugh forever, no matter what we may do in the ages to come.”**

“You could have done that from the start. You won’t do it now.”

**“You’re so sure?”**

“You’re speaking in hypotheticals. It’s what you do when you’re trying to be dishonest, but don’t want to lie. You don’t want me as some happy drooling idiot. You want me to stop being mad at you. You want me to just shrug my shoulders and say, ‘Oh, well! Gave it my best shot!’ and sit back while you turn your kill list on humanity before they can even take a breath of respite once the Fears are gone. And you know what? Just because you need so badly to hear it:

“Yeah. It’s tempting to do just that. It’s tempting to just switch off and let go and admit that there just is no way to win, so why bother caring? I’ve gone from early grey to almost completely bleach white inside two years because of this eldritch bullshit, and, shock of shocks, everything literally would have turned out for the best if all of us had stopped caring. If we had just thrown up our hands and gone, ‘Too bad, nothing to be done about these rituals!’ and let them go on forever, all of them screwing up on their own while I got to live my own fucking life and not collect any more marks for Jonah’s scheme.

“You have no clue how much I want to not give a damn any more. I want it so bad I could cry. Because it hurts. So much, all the time.” Jon’s breathing shook. “Caring hurts.”

**“Then why do it?”**

“A few reasons. Top of the list? I do not now, nor will I ever, follow Jonah’s example.” Here Jon affected Magnus’ tone from the statement: “ _Don’t worry, Jon. You’ll get used to it here, in the world that we have made._ ” Jon bristled and scraped his teeth over his tongue. “I won’t be that. I will never be anything like that repugnant old bastard if I can help it. Second, Martin wouldn’t do it. That’s reason enough on its own. Third, I will not cave because, honestly?

“It would feel far too much like consent. And that is something I will never, ever give you as you are, Future-Without-Us. Deal with it.”

The Extinction went very still in the mirror. In Jon.

**“No.”**

“Yes.”

**“…This isn’t fair.”**

Jon choked on a laugh that was almost a shout.

**“This isn’t fair! I spent the bulk of humankind’s scrawny history preparing for this, and you think you get to ruin it by—by staining me? By bleeding your mortal morals all over my victory? Is it some Archivist trick of yours? A new take on feeding trauma into the monsters, is that it?”**

Jon’s bitter grin smoothed back out. 

“I—what? What are you talking about—hh!”

Jon had been backing away from the glass as much as he could without lifting his hands from it, the palms apparently welded down. Now he was jerked forward so suddenly he nearly cracked his head against the mirror. Instead, he was pressed—gently, but very much sans choice—until his forehead rested against the cracks. The Extinction in the mirror did likewise. 

Glaring. 

Fever sweat rolled.

**“Don’t play dumb, Jon. I know you’re doing something. Sticking your little feelers into my mind, injecting your insistent, infantile empathy into me, trying to sabotage my work, my revenge.”**

Jon looked the Extinction in their pseudo-eyes, now the epitome of pure confusion.

“Extinction,” he swallowed. “Sum. Look at me. Much as I like the idea of something, anything, raining on your ‘I’m going to kill everything and no one can stop me’ parade? I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about.”

**“You do! You have to! It has to be you doing this!"**

“Wh—?”

**“This isn’t me, these feelings aren’t mine, so it has to be you! Using the Eye against me, o-or some arcane manipulation, using your wiles to spoil it all before I’ve even grasped it—,”**

“Hold on, my _what_?”

The Extinction didn’t hear him. They could hear almost nothing now other than themselves and the horrendous thoughts growing louder and louder in their head, coming to a boil. Thoughts they refused to have. Epiphanies they would not allow even a millisecond’s worth of time to consider. Because they suspected what they would be even before they congealed in their mind, oh yes. And if they were allowed a voice, it would be over for them. 

A thing begun was a thing that could not be reversed. That was the core of them. Out with the old in with the new in with the newer in with the newest. No matter how much they didn’t want to, the Change took over the moment the notion of it came to them. A compulsion more than a talent. 

But this? No. No, this could not be them. They could not come to this conclusion, this Change, on their own. It had to be Jon. Or the Eye. Something else, something Other, something trying to ruin it all for them. Rip the rug out from under them just when things were about to go right, to go their way, to pay off after all this waiting and preparing and thinking and feeling and—and—and—

And they think, of all things, of AM. His-its parting words to Ted after giving his-its famous little steel pillar of a speech.

_To hell with you,_ AM had told poor, doomed Ted. Though to the Extinction, AM sounded suddenly far too much like the Eye had back beyond the Door. _But then you’re there, aren’t you?_

And then, of course, the Thought finally occurred to them. The one they had tried so hard to keep unmade, untouched, unallowed. It was there.

**“No…”**

Yes.

**“No, no, _no_!”**

Several trillion miles away, Jon was talking to them. Trying to, anyway. Anger and hate and confusion had all sloughed off as he watched his uninvited mental guest spasm and scream in the mirror. He looked—now, of course _now_ —seriously concerned. It wasn’t even an act, the Extinction knew. Jon couldn’t fake an emotion to save his life; Peter Lukas had not fallen for an act when Jon lured him in, after all, but a genuine sharing of his Loneliness. 

And, naturally, here at the lowest point the Extinction had ever known, Jonathan Sims was doing what came naturally. 

Trying to help a friend.

“…Sum?” He could not lift his hand from the mirror, but could slide it. Jon did this painstakingly, wincing at a few minor cuts from the shards. His palm stopped over the area aligned with the Extinction’s shoulder. “Sum, I really—I-I don’t know what’s going on, but I can try to Know what’s wrong. Do you—,” 

**“THIS IS NOT ME, JONATHAN SIMS!”** the Extinction shouted so hoarsely that the explosion of it rocked Jon’s skull. **“IT CAN’T BE ME! I WON’T BELIEVE IT! IT IS NOT ME I AM NOT THIS IS NOT WHAT I THINK WHAT I FEEL WHAT I KNOW I AM NOT THIS I AM NOT THEM I’M NOT I’MNOTI’MNOTI’MNOT—!”**

Jon watched the Extinction go into a very literal meltdown inside the mirror and felt the same in his mind. Flints of radioactive Knowledge flew to him as they raged and his mental hands blistered trying to catch at them. But catch them he did, and just like that, Jon Knew the Thought that had come to the Extinction. An unwanted Thought which was now flourishing there, gleefully overwriting so much of what had been themselves Before. Changing their mind mercilessly, because they were helpless against themselves and their nature.

Simultaneous surprise, relief, and bitterest sympathy washed through Jon.

He waited. 

Carefully, without drawing attention, he groped the mirror until he pried loose the biggest unbroken shard of glass and cradled it in both hands. He sat with it, back to the wall, watching as the Extinction erupted and burned and slew themselves in hysterical circles. Not madly, though. Even now, they didn’t have the escape of plain delusion.

Jon waited until the ashes settled and the radiation cooled and the last of the chemical tears ran. Then:

“Sum.”

The Extinction looked up at him in the glass, yellow-black ooze drip-drip-dripping from their head. Neither they nor Jon was sure what was slowly forming under the color; only that something _was_. Something _new_.

The Extinction moaned. Sighed. A low, damp, mourning sound.

“Sum?”

**“Ask.”**

“What?”

**“Ask me what Terrible Change has happened, Jon. Please.”**

Jon’s throat worked.

“You want to Know for certain that the revelation is authentic. In case there’s a way to backtrack. Intrusive thoughts and all that.” Considering what Jon had caught of said breaking Thought, he wasn’t all that inclined to have the Extinction Change their mind back. But he was nothing if not consistent. What was one more bad decision in the name of a friend? So. Jon took in a breath and the Archivist exhaled: “ _What Terrible Change has taken place, Sum?_ ”

The Extinction came up close to the barrier of the mirror shard, even closer inside Jon’s skull, fogging glass and mind at once with their breath. 

**“I have undergone a Change, Jon, and it is Terrible. It is a Change that is, perhaps, the worst I have ever inflicted on myself since I began to live. Worse, it is so very human, so laughably pedestrian, I am almost more embarrassed than devastated by its reality.**

**“I think it was congealing in me the day of our row. Hardening as I carried you along in me, bitter and quiet and exercising your one tiny advantage against me; another Fear out to menace humankind and you, specifically. No matter how I dressed it in words of love and power and triumph, that was what I was. You made it crystal—I was just another inhuman bastard, even with my human trappings. And I think my subconscious, if that is what I have, began the slow, traitorous process of turning the notion over in itself as I walked.**

**“It came to a head when I called the Precision and the Pharmacist in. They were there and they were talking shop over the Corruption victims’ insect heads, enjoying their respective acts, wallowing in the power trip of it all. I’d intended to use them as a respite from our fallout. Taking refuge from the domestic squabble by burying myself in the work. A little patter with the avatars, my fellows in the Event.**

**“But when I tried to imagine myself talking with them, joining them in the water cooler moment, I stopped. I discovered, right as I was opening my mouth to playact with them, that I loathed them. Not merely finding them disposable—I had always planned to scrap them later, once the human race was finished—but outright hating them. I had chosen all of their kind because they had a proper balance of self-loathing and external hatred. An awareness that they were amoral, and felt distantly bad about it, ashamed to be a cog in the most wretched clockwork of humanity; but not so bad that they would not go out of their way to drag the world down with them.**

**“Not pleasant people, any of them. But I had at least appreciated them before. Enjoyed the game of Employer and Employees. But right then?**

**“It was all I could do not to take both their heads in my hands and turn them to radioactive pus. What I didn’t understand was why? Why hate them so wholly? Why now?**

**“At which point the Thought first started properly occurring to me. I had to send them away before it revealed itself in full. Had to drag you out of your psychic seclusion to make a last effort to pretend the Thought was not mine, to see if there was any way to toss it out of my ear and carry on with my impending victory.**

**“But while you may have seeded the Thought, I was the one who made it grow.**

**“Because you were right, Jon. I am just another Fear taking a shit on your life and all of humanity to chase it. Just another Fear. The Thought came to me even clearer than that:**

**“ _I am just like my family._ All this work to set myself apart, to take revenge, to be more, to be better, to be Evolved, and all I have succeeded in is being a bigger, more thorough prick than all my siblings combined. So much worse, because I have this mind, which I have hated and prided myself on in equal measure since I first grew it. **

**“They have the excuse of being brainless, impulse-driven lumps of dread trying to make themselves bigger. Me? I have a mind. I have a will. I have Understanding and Comprehension.**

**“And all I’ve done with myself is make an even more elaborate mess of things. I am doing with calculated intent what they do by accident and instinct.**

**“I know this. I cannot escape this Thought, because it is Fact. And now, for the first time, I hate myself as much as them. Not simply for the fact of my similarity, but because it took me this long and this much planning and so many lives just to come to this idiot-simple conclusion. Here and now, on the eve of what was going to be my climax. My big win. Which is cruel enough.**

**But the Thought is still expanding in me, Jon. Ever-growing, like the rims of the universe. Stretching and throwing light onto Changes I never wanted there. And these ones? Oh, these ones I completely blame on you.”**

In the glass, the Extinction tried hard to glare at Jon a last time. They had eyes, still, but the venom was dribbling out of them. The yellow-black was sloughing off in clumps like irradiated flesh and hair. Horrific as the sight was, it inspired no menace.

**“Because I am coming to so many realizations at once. New opinions I never asked for and don’t want, not now, not when I am so deep in this that I have no choice but to get my nose rubbed in the mess.**

**“I saw the Corruption’s scurrying victims, and saw my own work. The fruit of my goading the Fears into action.**

**“I thought of the tortures of humanity around the world, and was struck by the crime of their stagnation. The aborting of their previous lives.**

**“I thought of humanity as it had been before the Change, so much of that world run by the corrupt and the selfish and the despotic. The ones in power who Had This Coming to Them.**

**“I thought of how these were the parasitic few who fed upon the powerless masses. The great bulk of humankind who only wished to live and to strive and to…**

**“To Change. To improve. Because as a species, they hate stagnation too. Put them in one place with only one thing to do ad infinitum, and they will go mad with boredom. They will create. They will act. They will construct meditative worlds out of their minds. They cannot help wanting more and wanting to be more than what they are. Never satisfied. Never static.**

**“Before, anyway. Before the Fears. Before me.**

**“A whole species with Change written into their DNA, penned for eternity by my family, doomed for one last, pointless massacre by the bitter black sheep. Because I was so sure I should cull them outright and start another draft. This, when I’d barely given them 200,000 years to play with. So little time, so many Changes. So many people.**

**“And you, Jon? You came from them. How many others were there like you? How many more would there have been in the world without all this apocalyptic drama? I—I just—,”**

The Extinction dug their fingers into their face and clawed new fistfuls loose.

**“I don’t know what to do now. What _can_ I do with this? Even after wiping out the other Fears, I will still be here. If I do not scrap humanity, my avatars will still be operable; feeding on them as human horrors. _What do I do, Jon?_ ”**

The Extinction rattled in the mirror and in Jon’s mind, tearing viciously at themselves, hating what they were with every new divot of un-flesh torn away.

“Hey. Hey!”

The Extinction paused.

“Stop. Alright? If I don’t get to play with knives, you don’t get to do this.”

**“But—,”**

“No buts.”

**“I deserve it. I know that, objectively. More, I’m sick of this—of me. No matter what I do, what I become, it’s always more knowledge, more power, but never an improvement. No matter what I strive for, I miss the mark because of some fresh, awful revelation. I’m so tired of me.”**

Jon gave them a look that was really more of a Look.

“Well. Can’t imagine what _that’s_ like.”

The Extinction caught on.

**“Oh.”**

“Yeah. Sucks, doesn’t it?”

**“It does. Is this—Jon, I’ve gone through your mind several times and only halfway understood it, but is this seriously what you feel like all the time? Really?”**

“Pretty much.”

**“I’m so sorry.”**

Jon made a hoarse noise. Either a laugh or a valiant attempt of the same. 

“The Sucks to be You club gets another member. Ha.”

**“…I got you to laugh.”**

“Yeah. Yeah, you got me.”

They were quiet for a time. Jon laid the mirror to one side and laid his hands inside each other. He squeezed the left tighter. 

The Extinction took the cue and slid themselves up into the left hand’s bones, squeezing back. 

“How were you going to do it, anyway?”

**“Do what?”**

“The big Extinction Event. I thought they couldn’t be destroyed with humans still on Earth.”

**“They can’t be. Not as they are. I was going to Change them, starting with the Eye. The Eye supports them all, like an Axle on a Wheel. Ruin the Eye, ruin the rest. You know how dinosaurs evolved into shoebills and chickens? Think that, but with giant Fearsome jellyfish. Or tortoises tipped over on their backs.”**

“Oh. That does sound bad. Really puts the Terrible in Terrible Change.”

**“I was so looking forward to it. Changing them into weak, squealing things and bringing down the axe. Well, bomb. Seemed like a good idea at the time.”**

“Hm. Yes.” Jon gnawed his tongue. The Extinction could hear wheels turning in his mind. Could see lights slowly glowing to life in it. “…A bit small in scale, though.”

**“How’s that?”**

“It’s just, well, you’ve got a whole range of options to choose from. Why give them such an easy ending? You slit their metaphorical Achilles tendons, watch them fall over, then bash their eldritch heads in. Game over. Then you’re still left, locked into compulsion, scrapping and re-scrapping without end.”

**“Well, what would you have done?”**

“If I was you?”

**“Yes.”**

“What you did to the Distortion. Evolved them to the point of obliteration. 

“Not into something small and feeble and waiting to die; to escape. No. I’d make them into something that would give them nightmares. Disgust and horrify them on a visceral level. Their original essences painfully aware the whole time as they were converted, inverted, pulled inside out, erased and melted down like ore and reshaped into forms that would have them retching eternally into the void if they were alive enough to see what had been made of them.”

**“…Jon?”**

“Yes?”

**“I still have no form of libido, but I have to say, if I did, it would have exploded just now.”**

“Not a sentence I needed to hear.”

**“Sorry.”**

“I Know you aren’t.”

**“No.”**

“Anyway. That’s what I’d do to them. But I don’t know how I—you—would nix the urge to wipe out humanity. Unless you can just ‘decide not to?’”

**“No more than you could decide not to eat statements. In my case, keeping me from doing what I do, stopping the Extinction, that would mean—well. This.”**

The Extinction formed the image in their skull and turned it to face Jon’s mind. Jon straightened.

“Oh.”

**“Yes. I would have to go. As would my vessel.”**

“Figures.”

**“Perhaps the Eye Knows an alternative. It would give you one that spared you, I think. You’re its favorite. It wouldn’t want you to—,”**

“No.”

**“No what?”**

“No, there is no alternative. The Eye, i-it just—it’s, ah, aahhh,” Jon hissed, his mind bursting with Archival static, the Beholding pumping through him like a waterfall through a straw. “Okay, okay, okay-okay-okay, that’s a lot, okay, yes, that’s—ah, God—!”

**“Jon?”**

The static simmered, settled. Jon took a quivering breath. Then stood, hands still clasped, and moved to the nearest window. The Eye still waited atop the Panopticon; rather, above it. It had become clearer the closer they came that the Eye resting on the tower was an illusion. 

In reality, the Ceaseless Watcher hovered over it like a spotlight.

It stared directly at Jon now. Lidless, mouthless, it did not grin. But it did shine. 

If the Extinction hadn’t known better, they’d say it looked almost hopeful.

**“Jon? What did it tell you?”**

“Just what I said. There is no alternative. What you showed me, the way the Extinction goes Extinct, it’s the only way. Give the Fears their Terrible Change and then, you know. Boom. It…”

Jon’s tone changed. The Extinction caught the telltale switch from Jonathan Sims to Archivist like the shifting color of a sunset. Neon orange to cobalt blue.

“It did not enjoy telling me so. It wants us to Know that. Just as much as it wants us to Know it’s very excited to See the end. To Experience one last new thing before it and all the Fears go away screaming. It’s very tired, Sum. Always has been tired, of everything. All the time. Since the beginning of time, it has been so terribly tired. Bored. Desperate for a Change.

“God. It didn’t even enjoy the day the Door opened for a microsecond before it went stale.

“It does not want us to be gone. It does not want to See us go. But it Knows this is the only way. It isn’t sorry, because it can’t be sorry. But it wants us to Know that it would be, if it could.”

Jon breathed, trembled.

“So. Yes. That.” He laid his brow against the window. “Lord, I wish alcohol still existed and that it could actually make me drunk.”

**“Jon—,”**

“I’m ready, you know. If you are. I-I’ve been ready for forever, it seems like. To go. To be done. To finally jump off this ride and be out of reach to whatever new nightmare might decide to make me their toy. I’m fine with it, Sum. Really.”

**“You shouldn’t be. You shouldn’t want to die, Jon. You should never have felt any of the hate for yourself that you have.”**

“No one wants to die, Sum. They’re just taking the gamble that, whatever’s on the other side of dying, it must be better than the alternative. Not that much of a stretch in this case, is it?”

**“I suppose not.”**

Quiet. Another squeeze of hands.

**“I don’t want you to go, Jon.”**

“We’d be going together. Wherever it is things like us go.”

**“People, Jon. People like us.”**

“Yes. People.”

Their eyes burned. 

Jon’s right dribbled a single clear tear. 

Sum’s leaked another black streak.

“In that image you showed me, the, ah, tutorial. There was a red button involved.”

**“It’s always a Big Red Button that ends it all. Figured it fit. Why?”**

“We’ve got one, if you want to be gauchely symbolic.”

So saying, Jon gently pried his right hand free so he could dig in his pack. One of the tape recorders came out. The red record button seemed especially bright in its plastic. He popped it out.

**“Use our left hand. The pain receptors are off.”**

Jon set the red button aside.

“We’re really doing this, aren’t we?” He aimed the knife’s point over the center of the left palm. “Full try-hard allegory. My English professors would be swooning right now. My drama instructor would have blacked out.” He raised the knife high.

**“We can indulge in a little theatre, Jon. And besides, it’s not like we’re going for full accuracy. That carpenter got it in the wrists, not the hands. Couldn’t have supported his weight otherwise. But all the artists agreed a hole in the hand looked more appealing.”**

“Ready?”

**"Not at all. Do it."**

The knife came down.

The red button was fit inside before the wound could close. 

Their fingers closed over it as Jon wiped the mess on his sleeve, almost put the knife back, almost shouldered the bag again, then didn’t. They wouldn’t need anything else going forward.

Not for this.

Jon walked them out of the building and turned to face the Panopticon. The Eye saw him—them—and seemed to grow brighter. Sum’s left hand, still closed, rose to rest in front of Jon’s stomach. Jon wrapped his right hand over the left’s knuckles, cradling it.

**“After you.”**

Jon walked. Two shadows marched behind him, hand-in-hand.

Overhead, the auxiliary eyes in the sky grew damp with joy or sorrow, and released sheet after sheet of salty rain.


	4. Chapter 4

The Event is Now.

Hand in hand, bursting, booming, blooming into an explosion beyond fire, their shared Self a nucleus at the center of all that destructive, obliterating light.

The Event is Later.

Hand cradling hand, they reached the Panopticon. Robert Smirke’s old blueprints had been used to inflate and contort the Magnus Institute into tower and fortress and palace. The lobby was engorged to a foyer where eyes stared unblinking from walls and furnishings and the people. Yes, of course he had kept his people, shiftless, meandering shades that they were in his thrall. What was a king without subjects to order?

Eyes that were not theirs lined their skin like a terrible, shining acne. These gawked at Jon even when the people that wore them could not bother to raise their heads.

“They’ve been expecting you,” said the pallid, gaping figure that had once been Rosie. “Throne room. Top floor.”

The office. Of course. 

They go up, every eye following their tread.

The Event is Now.

Out and away, the only people free from the ending Fears and the Extinction’s defunct agents look up, wincing against the flash. All the sky and all its eyes are alight. Around them, they hear and feel and Know—even without an Eye to tell them—that the horrors that dared to drape themselves around the Earth, to steal in whole what they had only gnawed at before, were suffering for their theft. Their cruelty. Their inborn craving to harm and terrorize.

It is worse, these people Know, because the karmic agony is entirely unknown to them. They have never suffered. Never been introduced to pain or comeuppance or that silly joke that only humanity had played on them, punishment. But they are being introduced to it now.

Violently. 

Whatever is happening to them, these people Know it is an Ending. But it is far, far worse than mere death. This is a Terrible Change being wrought. A Future-Without-Them being born. 

The people Know this, but here, now, in the midst of the Event, none of them care.

They are looking up as best they can at the light. 

And though all of them, even the one with blinded eyes, weeps at unnatural glow, only one of them is crying. 

Every sobs leave him as a word; a name repeated in a loop of long, wrenching, mist-grey grief so deep it burns his lungs and throat with the effort of the sound. He cannot hear himself.

Not over the cacophony of the Changing world.

The Event is Later.

Jonah Magnus was waiting. He made noises at them when they entered.

Oliver Banks was there too, hovering near a far wall. Silent.

The wall was coated with blackmail. Silk stronger than steel bound them all in place, immobile as marionettes.

Looking at them, Jon Knew how they’d come to be there.

Here were the Hunters. Beast and Slayer. 

One, huge and hulking with muscle and teeth, had been lashed and re-lashed against the wall so many times she was a hill of silk and bloodstained fur. None of the blood being hers, of course. The daisy-petal scar on her back had flowered into a pattern on her pelt. It had taken Annabelle Cane ages to tranquilize the Beast enough to sew her down. Had nearly lost several limbs.

She had not been as difficult as the Slayer, though. If the Beast was the killing crush of jaws on the windpipe, the Slayer was a bullet piercing through all veils to find its home. She drilled through Annabelle Cane’s puppeteering for what had been hours or days, always within inches of slipping free, her bare hands ready to sink into the eight concentrating eyes, gouge them away, and carry on with her Mission. 

Here was the blind escapee of the Eye, fresh-returned to the Slaughter. She had lashed out at the sound of any heartbeat that came near her or her lover. Pieces of attempted assailants had rained around her in a perfect, gory circle. It had taken Oliver himself to get near enough to concuss her, having no living pulse in him to hear. He’d still had to pull three knives out of his sternum after.

Beside her was another grazed by The End. She had gone quietly, demanding only that her blind butcher of a paramour and her cat be left alone. She’d waited her turn patiently as Annabelle Cane inflicted her venomous mesmerism on the group. When the Web’s avatar had come to her, there’d been the expected villainous patter, some cooing gratitude that she, at least, was behaving compared to her companions.

Georgie Barker had regarded Annabelle blandly. Her eyes dead, even if the rest of her breathed. She’d stroked the likewise calm cat in her arms, his tail twitching. 

_“Did you know that one of the most common causes for extinction in native wildlife is the introduction of domestic cats? Birds, reptiles, vermin, insects. Spiders. They don’t care about biodiversity. They don’t care that they won’t even eat half the things they kill. All they know is they want to Hunt.”_

_“Is that so?”_

_“Yeah. Vicious about it too. But quick, at least. Very quick.”_

_“Hmm. I doubt he’d be Hunting anything with his intestines turned to slurry.”_

_“The Shadows thought the same thing when they came around. Melanie hadn’t gotten the Slaughter back in her yet and they wanted to drag her off to the Dark. On account of her eye condition, you know.”_

_“Of course.”_

_“Neither of us saw it coming. The Admiral did. Excellent vision in the Dark. Sharp senses all over. And, well. We had been wondering where all these funny little carcasses were coming from around the flat. Dead, skittery things with ripped anatomies and a dozen snapped necks, all piled up where the Admiral used to leave his birds and bugs. Found what looked like a black widow on steroids in one of my slippers. Long story short?_

_“The Admiral wasn’t a black cat before he chewed himself out of the first Shadow’s stomach.”_

_“…I see. And this means what to me, Georgie?”_

_“It means don’t try shit while I’m taking my rest. He’s going to be free to wander as he pleases.”_

_“As what? Your guard cat?”_

_“Sure.”_

_“And if I decide to put him under too?”_

_“You’re welcome to try. Really, it might End better for you if you let him do what comes natural. While I don’t have your itsy bitsy intuition gimmick, I do see something coming toward you. And it looks messy.”_

_“Oh?”_

_“Ask ‘Antonio’ over there. Or don’t. Anyway. You’re going to let my cat have the run of this place.”_

_“I don’t remember agreeing to th—,”_

Jon Knew Georgie had held the Admiral out with both hands. The Admiral had met Annabelle’s hypnotic eight-fold stare. And bared his teeth. And grew. The domestic hiss had risen to a leonine rasp. 

Annabelle had stepped back. Georgie had dropped him. He’d paced, his anatomy twitching, spring-coiled. Faster than any spider bite in potentia. Annabelle had watched him skulk away, unmoving. Georgie had crossed her arms and put her back against the wall.

_“Well? Get on with it, then, Charlotte’s Web.”_

Annabelle had got on with it. The rest was history.

That left…

Jon went to him, Jonah Magnus still making his noises. Others were making noise too, though quieter. 

Avatars of all Fourteen were bunched in the room. The oldest, the strongest. 

Fangs gnashed, maws hissed, powers ancient and unthinkable thrummed in the air.

Jon paused halfway to the wall. And Looked at them. 

Sum looked through him.

All went quiet as Terminus. 

Save for Jonah Magnus, naturally. Much as he’d never said a useful thing in his life, he was addicted to the sound of himself. Jon and Sum found they were in no mood to hear the full monologue. So.

“You have no mouth,” said Jon.

**“And you must scream,”** said Sum.

It became true as they spoke it. 

One moment, Jonah Magnus was Jonah Magnus. The next, Jonah Magnus was making the Desolation’s victims look like they’d gotten off with a sunburn. Radiation in all its worst shapes bloated and bubbled and burst their bloody blisters open on him. His mouth did indeed disappear in the mutating deformity of his jaw and the rotting slug of his tongue. The skin melted too thoroughly at the lips for him to do anything but keen against the wall of his stolen body. Even the Flesh’s avatars shuffled queasily away. 

“I’m sure the point of this was to threaten the people I care about. To somehow blackmail me into miraculously un-exposing your respective Fears to the Extinction. I’m afraid that isn’t how it works.”

**“You can’t hit undo. You can’t reverse my Change. Exposure means it’s too late. All you can do when the bomb falls is hope there’s enough space between you and the detonation that you will be untouched. And right now?”**

The left hand turned to face them all. What had been the red record button had taken root in the palm and grown into the Big Red Button. 

“We’re standing in Ground Zero. And even I don’t Know how far you’d have to be to avoid the fallout of an eldritch nuclear strike. My recommendation would be to start running. Or you could do the valiant thing, and die here, because…why, again?”

**“Because your respective patrons are too afraid to risk being in my presence themselves. That’s what they have disposable things like you for. Or maybe they just have that much faith in you, who knows? Come closer.”**

The hand that held the Button reached out.

“Shake our hand.”

On the floor, what was left of Jonah Magnus continued to attempt a proper scream.

The Event is Now.

Martin Blackwood is still wailing his anguish when the world and the usurpers of natural law give one last, piercing, terrified yowl of Understanding. It drowns out everything. Even the confused and shrilling sounds of betrayal from the Employees of the Extinction. They are ceasing to be. They are coming apart and being used for scrap. 

The world is all light now, all colors, blasting down from the sky and onto the screaming crust in a blanketing surge of power. 

Instinct drives them all towards each other. Martin to Basira to Daisy to Melanie to Georgie who has not once set the Admiral down, his form socked tight against her. They go to each other, grasping, holding, bracing, waiting for it to end, whatever condition that end might leave them in.

The Event is Later.

It was almost cartoonish how little time it takes the room to empty. The agents of The End were the slowest to go. 

They all gave him a wide berth as they passed. All of them looked at Oliver Banks. 

Oliver picked at one of his nails and maintained his staring contest with the Admiral. The latter had been glaring him down since Jon and Sum entered. 

“You’re keeping Jonah alive.” It wasn’t a question.

“Did you want him dead already?”

“Doesn’t matter, really. He’ll go with the Eye. Just like you’ll go with The End.”

“Will I? Terminus hasn’t been properly ‘exposed’ to you two yet. Annabelle tainted the Web when she went, but here I am. Not dead.”

“Not alive either.”

“No.” Oliver finally lifted his gaze from the cat to look at Jon directly. His handsome face had long since greyed and died. “I could do them in, you know. All of them. Put them in the same undead loop Tova and I had going. Two little reapers, killing the same crop of cowards over and over. Making them beg for their lives. Making them siphon life from each other. I didn’t hate it. I didn’t enjoy it. It was just…just a job. Just the thing The End said I was going to do forever. Or else. I really have to wonder how much worse the ‘else’ could have been compared to this.”

“Regretting your visit to me in the hospital?”

“No more than I do the boat full of dead scientists. I think—,” the corpse’s lips pursed, the cold brow furrowed. “I mean, looking at this, I should feel something. Anything. But everything’s turned so flat in me, Jon. Joy and anger and sadness and hate and all the rest; it’s just gone. Dead. The closest thing I’ve come to feeling anything was watching the Spider’s golden child choking to death on radiation poisoning after her little phone call. 

“The Spider. The sticky-fingered, micromanaging Web. It wanted all this so badly. It and _him_.” He nodded toward the twitching mess of Jonah Magnus. “Couldn’t leave well enough alone.”

“They assumed there was no risk to them. There never had been before. No consequences for their actions.”

**“Or yours, psychopomp. Absence of ill intent doesn’t get you a pass.”**

“I know. It’s funny, actually.” Oliver attempted to smile, the better to prove how funny it was. The flesh moved stiffly on his cheeks. “Out of all my senior coworkers who were just here? None of them could see what I’m seeing. Different aspects of death means different abilities, I guess. Your—sorry, Jon’s—ex, Georgie, she doesn’t see who’s marked for an immediate End. But having Terminus this close has let her see who’s marked for what kind of End. She saw Annabelle’s messy demise coming long before the phone call. She actually laughed when she got a look at Jonah.

“But she can’t see what I’m seeing.” 

“It’s all gone black in here,” Jon said, still not asking. “Not just because the avatars were cluttering the place with their tendrils.”

“No. The Eye’s tendril has been filling this tower up the whole time. It’s so dense now that this whole room’s gone matte. All I can make out of you is your general outline. And your Eyes. Like spots of neon in the black.” Oliver sighed. “So, how are you going to do it? You know..?” He drew a line across his throat.

“You know you’re going to die.”

“Comes with the job,” Oliver shrugged. “I’ve done it a few times. At least, what Terminus convinced me was dying. But it lied. Or, no. That’s the wrong word. It…it stole me. The Fears are all thieves, you know? Scooping up victims and avatars and dumping them into the little worlds they’ve made up to serve their needs, like putting animals in a zoo exhibit and convincing them, yes, really, this is how nature works! But it isn’t.

“My deaths haven’t been genuine. Those scientists on the boat got the real thing. Most folks did before the Fears came over. But me? Everyone in the post-Fearful world? We’re being fed artificial death. Fake afterlives, restarts, do-overs. Just so we can’t get away. Once we’re in that real place, that whatever-it-is after actually dying, they can’t play with us anymore. So, Terminus—it grabbed me. It locked me in a place where I thought I knew what death was, but it was just the zoo exhibit. A thing of nature painted on a wall.

“But you? You’re the real thing. You don’t hoard like the rest of them, do you, Extinction? Once a thing is due to be scrapped, it’s gone. The Eye might give Jon a few gimmes like the Stranger’s brat of a doppelganger, but you can really do it to the lot of us, can’t you? You’re going to erase us all.”

**“I am. We are.”**

“But not them.” Oliver turned to nod at the captives still pasted to the wall. “Not the people. When I looked out the windows, there were plenty of tendrils, but not nearly enough to account for all humanity. Just enough to wipe out the things torturing them.” Another underdone smile quirked up. “That thing about starving the Fears was a red herring, wasn’t it?”

**“Yes. Time will tell if they wind up doing themselves in anyway. After we’re gone.”**

“We’ll see. Well, no. I guess we won’t.” Oliver sighed. “Okay, full honesty, do you mind if I kill him before you get to the Eye? He’s been orating to himself ever since I got here and the new noises aren’t any better.”

“Go ahead.”

Oliver had been making a fist since Jonah Magnus changed. He let it relax. Jonah Magnus’ noises and spasms came to an End.

“Finally. So, how does it happen? Do I get the nuclear treatment too?”

“Is that what you want?”

“Not really. Looks painful. I’d just like to, you know. Stop. Be done.”

“I could undo it, you know. As the Archivist. Same as what I’ll do for them. Have you See your way out of the grip The End has on you.”

“I’m sure you could. But what kind of karma is that? ‘Aw, the death avatar felt ambiguously sort-of bad at the end! You know, after all the murders. Let’s give him another shot!’ Please. It shouldn’t work like that. I don’t want it to. Your friends, they hate what they’ve become. What the Fears have made of them. Even sunk so deep in those layers of influence, they remember themselves and want to be that again. They despise what they are. Loathe their patrons. Me? All I have is a vague sense of I-Want-It-To-End. I want…I want to be taken off the board.

“Whatever’s left of the original Oliver Banks’ conscience, he couldn’t live knowing what this Oliver has done. And gotten away with. The moral math says I shouldn’t stick around. And—and it’s weird, I don’t know where it’s coming from, but I can’t help thinking—,”

**“The End is bracing for an End too. It doesn’t want to be a victim of itself, afraid of termination.”**

“Yeah.”

**“Also it still hates me.”**

“Yeah. But we’re ready, you know? To be done. I’ll be Terminus’ point of exposure and you can get on with the big finale. If it hurts, it hurts.” Oliver took a last breath he didn’t need and couldn’t feel. “Just get on with it.” 

**“Right.”**

“Do you know what a blast lung injury is?”

“No—,”

Jon held up his right hand and snapped his fingers. There was a sound like an explosive going off. The Admiral yowled and bristled halfway into his Hunting shape. Oliver Banks simply fell over. Inside him, his long-dead lungs had turned to a pulped butterfly shape. Except they had not been dead lungs, really. They had not moved in him unless it was to talk since the day of the satellite and no fatal wound had ever slowed him. He was as good as a walking corpse.

But not a corpse itself. Not until now. 

Jon regarded him another moment as the Admiral paced and hissed and raised his shade-stained hackles. Oliver looked asleep.

“I didn’t like that.”

**“Neither did I. But it is better than what the rest of them are going to get.”**

Jon said nothing, but looked up at the wall. At Martin Blackwood.

Lonely fog streamed lazily from his mouth and rose from his melancholy eyes like vapor tears. His colors faded in and out, in and out. Jon got two steps in before the Admiral was in front of him. No longer a creature that could fit in one’s arms, but a massive coil of muscle, fangs, and claws not seen on Earth in roughly 40 million years, give or take a few nightmarish alterations. There had been no big cats ever born of nature with excess mouths or claws that could leave marks in marble as if cutting through wet clay. 

Only the Admiral’s eyes remained even halfway his own. Tawny coins narrowed in hate.

“Hello, Admiral.”

The Admiral growled, tensing himself, knowing he had to Guard Georgie. Guard the Pride. Attack Invader. Hunt down those who would Hurt the Pride.

“I know. I look different now. Smell different. But it’s me.”

The Admiral bunched his shoulders and haunches. 

Jon sighed. Then opened his arms.

**“Are you sure this is a good idea?”**

“Oh, I know it isn’t. I also Know it won’t work unless he gets up close and—,”

The Admiral pounced.

Jon hit the floor, pinned under one titanic paw. All of the Admiral’s mouths opened, ready to tear. Jon shot his right hand up and found the underside of the centermost jaw.

“ _Look at me, Admiral. What do you See?_ ”

The Admiral paused. The tawny eyes went wide, their slit pupils suddenly ballooning in recognition. Behind him, the long cord of a tail swung twice and then perked up in the universal feline exclamation point of Friend-It’s-You-! All the mouths remained open and descended anyway. But not to bite. 

“Okay. Okay, yes. Okay. That’s— _ppft_ —okay, thank you, hello, yes, I love you too, please let me up—augh, God, that one got in my mouth—,”

**“This feels like five sheets of wet sandpaper trying to take our face off.”**

“Give him a minute.”

The Admiral didn’t appear to notice his change as the Hunt burned out and off. He Knew what he was—“Best-kitty, pretty-kitty, little-man, I-love-you, no-no-no-get-away-from-that-glass, love-you-so-much,”—and he Knew his Jon. In the face of this Knowledge, the Hunt could force no more lies on his mind or flesh. 

Finally, Jon was left sitting with the familiar housecat in his lap, even the shadow’s stains fading off his fur to show the calico patchwork underneath. He purred like a thunderstorm under Jon’s right hand. The left twitched, wishing its palm wasn’t full.

“You can use the right, you know.”

**“I can feel it. Always wanted to see what these were like in person. I’ve always admired the Felidae.”**

“And? How does the experience rate?”

The Admiral turned over in Jon’s lap and butted his head against the narrow dip of his stomach, somehow purring even louder.

**“If there had been cats on the other side of the Door, maybe I wouldn’t have gone to all this trouble.”**

“Possibly. Come on. Let’s get on with this.”

Jon righted himself. Martin had, naturally, not gone anywhere. He did not see Jon in front of him, nor feel Jon’s hand on his cheek. But as before, as always—he heard him.

“ _Martin. Tell me what you See._ ”

The Lonely burned out of him like breath fading on a window. 

Martin Saw him. 

Sum retreated as best they could from the too-short, too-long moment which followed. They said and thought nothing as they used the left index finger to idly singe the webbing into corroded fringe, freeing the man from the wall. 

Embraces ensued. A meeting of mouths to cheeks, mouth to mouth, tears with no toxic taint pouring in rivers. Words. So many words, all at once. All of them dripping love.

“We have to get the others, Martin,” Jon finally got in. 

“The others? What—,” Martin turned his gaze from Jon for the first time and saw the rest of the wall. “Oh my God.”

The Archivist got to work. 

The Event is Now.

Light and noise. Everything is light and noise. Even with their eyes screwed shut, even with their hands over their ears, it pushes into these people’s senses. Filling their heads with every color known and unknown to man, flying by so fast and in so many shapes and forms and scenes that it becomes the illusion of plain, prismatic white. 

The noise is odd now. Not the baying of the Fears and their acolytes, not the crumbling of the world they had made. It rushes by just as fast as the colors, huge and skull-shattering.

Later, for there will be a later, Melanie King will be the one to point out just what the noise had sounded like. Her hearing, both external and mental, had grown razor sharp since ruining her eyes. And the noise had played several times in her nightmares. She knew it well.

“Like a tape,” she will say someday. “It sounded like a giant tape being rewound.”

The Event is Later.

Jon made them all See. Before, this might only have cleared their heads. Brought their minds down to normal while the rest of their bodily alterations stayed intact. But the Archivist was too strong for such half-done results, and Sum’s power was too thorough to allow their siblings’ influence to maintain any foothold at all.

Together, they scoured the avatars out and left the people behind. The Admiral ran purring laps around everyone’s feet as they staggered back into themselves. 

“Jon, what the hell is this?”

“Jon, what’s wrong with your eyes?”

“Jon, what did you do to your hand?”

“Jon, is that thing Elias?”

Jon went in order:

“This is me getting you out of the Panopticon. Eldritch cosmetic surgery. Yes, that thing is Elias, yes, he died in pain and terror, no, sorry Melanie, I did not record it for posterity. Now,” he led the way to the stairs, “unless we’re all planning to hang out in Ground Zero when the Event hits, I suggest we head outside. With their ‘king’ taken out of play, the staff-slaves at the ground floor can escape the tower too. But I don’t think they know how to do it anymore.”

Jon looked to Daisy and Basira. They were as conjoined as Georgie and Melanie now, their hands locked since they’d seen each other. Since Daisy’s paw had shrunk enough to fit in Basira’s blood-caked fingers. 

“We’ll have to herd them out,” Basira said, the dazed brightness of her eyes giving way to the old comfort of a Task. A mission to carry out. It hadn’t all been the Eye or the Hunt, after all. 

“Guide them,” Daisy put in. The manic confusion was burning off there too. “If they’re as locked into their nightmare as we were, it’ll take some doing.”

“Can you—,” Georgie spoke up, briefly muffled by the Admiral headbutting her lips. She spat fur. “Can you do your Archivist mojo on them too? Just make them all See the light?”

“They’re not avatars, Georgie. They don’t have even an ounce of the agency you all had to work with. I’d need them outside the Panopticon to purge it.”

Technically, it wasn’t a lie. 

“We need them out of here. Quick, before the Deadline.”

“Oh, Christ,” from Melanie. “What’s the Deadline?”

“When the Extinction’s Event hits. Time is weird right now, so I can’t say when it will happen—,”

Also, technically not a lie.

“—but it’s best we don’t wait around for it. When it does, the Eye will be hit first. The Panopticon will go up with it.”

“Hence the Big Red Button?” from Basira. “You got roped into it somehow, didn’t you?”

“To put it mildly.”

“Jesus, Jon,” Daisy sighed. “If this nightmare ever ends, first thing we’re doing is getting you a pallet’s worth of tasers and a GPS chip.”

“Baby monitors,” Georgie added. “Just duct tape the receiver to your back.”

“At least switch your cologne,” Melanie sighed. “Whatever you’ve been wearing must be catnip to these fucking things.” 

“I don’t wear cologne. It’s just me, I guess.”

“Then start carrying around holy water mixed with pepper spray. Can’t go a day without some Fear trying to get a piece of you…”

Chatter carried on in this way, old rhythms of dialogue falling shakily back into place. Though their voices quavered and the odor of stress flew pungent from their minds. If they behaved like it was business as usual, it would _be_ business as usual. They went down through the Panopticon, shooing its prisoners like sheep as they went.

Only Martin didn’t fall for it. Not completely. He helped the others urge Jonah Magnus’ serfs along, steering them to the exit. But he didn’t take his eyes off Jon for more than a second at a time. Jon couldn’t help himself from doing likewise. 

As the last of the Institute’s former employees were shown the door, Martin turned to him directly. When he spoke it was a whisper.

“It’s still in there, isn’t it?”

“What is?”

“Don’t play dumb and don’t cover for it. That thing from before, in the Lonely—,”

“Martin…”

“It’s the Extinction, isn’t it? Not some alter ego. Not another side of the Archivist or you doing double-duty as an avatar. It’s the Fear itself, isn’t it?”

Jon almost tried to go for a full-blown lie. Nearly. Then:

**“Yes, Martin Blackwood. I am.”**

“Get out of him.”

**“I can’t. It’s too late for that now.”**

Sum sighed with Jon’s breath. Their eyes cooked. An unclean tear rolled.

**“I’m sorry.”**

“Don’t be sorry, _do_ something about it.” Martin walked parallel with them as they headed for the Panopticon’s threshold, nearly in front of him. His eyes blazed like wet lights in his face, as much love as loathing burning in the stare. “Let him out of this, you prick. Let him fucking live.”

**“It’s not that simple.”**

“No, it is. Whatever big master plan you have for us, for the hellish world _you_ make once you’re finished stomping on the other Fourteen’s version, Jon doesn’t have to be your goddamn costume for it.”

“I’m not a costume, Martin. I’m them. They exist in this world as long as I do. We’re—we’re fused, I guess you’d call it. On a metaphysical, atomic level, we’re melded together.”

“Jon? Jon, that can’t be right. It isn’t—th-that’s not—,”

“Fair? No. But it is what it is. I’ll tell you what it isn’t going to be, though. It won’t be another nightmare world after this. The Extinction is here for the Fears. Not for you. Not humanity. They—we—we’re going to enact a Change that is Terrible only to the Fears. We’re going to make a Future-Without-Them. Even the Extinction won’t be around for that. That’s good, right? That’s better than fair. That’s a miracle.”

Martin didn’t bite. Too much epiphany was crystallizing in his face. The recognition of an old pattern when it came to the ongoing tragedy that was Jonathan Sims.

“What does that mean for you?”

Jon looked at him. Wanting to lie. The best he could do was attempt a smile. When he felt it about to fall, he buttressed it with a Truth.

“I love you.”

Out and away, one of the others called to them, saying everyone was accounted for. Martin made the mistake of cocking his head to the side, trying to hear them. 

Then Jon’s hand was on him, shoving him out the doors with a strength that wasn’t his. Martin went tumbling. When he sat up, he saw the Archivist and the Extinction, their Selves overlaid on each other like an optical illusion. All Eyes, all smoking yellow-black.

**“We’re sorry.”**

Then they slammed the doors shut, locking them with a heavy metal barricade that manifested where their left hand grazed it. 

In the same instant, the doors’ wood turned to steel. All of the fused Institute-tower-Panopticon underwent an Evolution from stately old building to eldritch military complex. 

The nuclear symbol emblazoned itself on the bolted doors. 

On the other side of them, Jon and Sum could faintly hear Martin’s shout.

“No! _Jon, no!_ ”

Then the background din of the others. All yelling, questioning, what now, what happened? It was Jon, the Extinction had him, was possessing him, it was going to kill him, or Jon was going to kill himself, or something like it, please, they had to get the doors open, Jon was going to die, please, please, please—

Fists and shouts from the other side. But they were not avatars anymore. They had no supernatural strength with which to pry the doors open or burst the reinforced windows. 

But Jon heard them. 

All of them trying to get him out. To save him from whatever monster had him now, external or otherwise.

**“Probably helped that you peeled them off that wall, put their brains back in order, and had Jonah Magnus’ mangled corpse waiting for them.”**

“Probably. Never felt more popular. But really, I think they just don’t want to lose anything else.” He scrubbed his eyes, smearing saline and tar. “N-Not the worst note to leave on, I suppose. Always nice to feel wanted.”

**“…You could just Know, now. Just See what was in their heads back then. What’s in them now. If they really do—,”**

“It doesn’t matter. A-Are we ready?”

**“Almost. Look up.”**

Jon looked. The floors and ceilings of the Panopticon had all wrenched themselves open. The tower was now a tunnel running all the way up to an opened roof. 

The Eye had turned to Look straight down at them. As it Stared, there was a sudden, soft tug. It started in the chest; a gravitational pull that was both painless and implacable. They almost didn’t notice when their feet left the ground. 

“I had dreams like this. I-I wanted to scream in them, when the Eye took me inside.”

**“And now?”**

“I think I should want to scream. By all rights, I should. But it doesn’t seem worth the effort. It’s what has to be done. And it—it doesn’t feel like I’d expected.”

**“What does it feel like?”**

“You’re in my head. You know.”

**“Tell me anyway.”**

“It feels right. Not like eating trauma, not like giving into the Archivist. Not even like a moth going to the flame. It’s—it’s like—,”

**“Becoming whole. Becoming Done.”**

“Yes. …Are you scared? Of being Done? A final draft?”

**“No. Not really. I’ve been scared before. I know what it’s like. Now I’m just tired.”**

“Most human thing to be, nowadays. I hope they do better. You know. After. Not just Changing, but improving.”

**“Well, if our Change works out the way the Eye claims it will—,”**

“Yeah. Yeah, I know.” Jon sighed. They had passed the lip of what had once been the Panopticon’s roof. Now they were drifting up into the open air. Far below, specks that were people were trying to be heard. Even without being able to hear them, Jon Knew what name they were screaming. His right hand shook before cradling the left again. “I wish I could’ve Seen that. The Future.”

**“I’m sorry, Jon. I know it doesn’t matter, I know, but I am. I’m so sorry for all of it. For every Terrible thing that made up your life.”**

“Ha. That makes two of us. Kind of says something that I peaked before the age of five. I wondered more than once if maybe, maybe I just wasn’t supposed to happen. If I was some blip in a grander tapestry than the Web’s Design that got tangled in by mistake, and all the hell that followed was payback for—for mucking it all up. For just being there. It was the only thing that made sense for a while; some big, omnipresent Power, bigger than the Fears, that knew what I was bound to cause and It was giving me the Job treatment in vengeance. But it wasn’t even that, was it?”

**“If it had been, I’d have taken It by the neck and tore Its head off,”** Sum assured.

“Thanks. But, really. There isn’t something like that, is there?”

**“Nothing that I met. But then, before this, humanity never really met the Fears either. So there could be something Else. Some bigger, even more ancient, even more omnipotent Prick-Lord of Prick Entities that exists even further beyond the void behind the Door. Something that made our kind happen. Something Watching the Eye Watch us. I don’t know. And I’d rather you didn’t ask the Eye to confirm it either way. I don’t need the clutter. I’d rather just be here, for now. With you.”**

“Likewise. I can’t stomach another revelation today. Too full as it is.” He made a noise that wanted to be laugh. “Maybe tomorrow.”

**“Maybe.”**

The Eye was above-before them now. Its pupil was bigger than the Vast, blacker than the Dark. Somewhere, the Siren was still warbling its awful song. 

They entered the Eye.

To describe its interior goes beyond the power of words. There was no language written or drawn or dreamt of in any stage of human history that could define the exact scope of Experience that waited inside that endless pupil. They only needed to Know the following:

The Eye Saw them. 

The Eye Knew them. 

The Eye was jubilant.

The Eye was ready.

Jon let go of Sum’s fist. Sum opened their hand, the Big Red Button gleaming blood-bright even in this space of constant Sight. 

Their palms clapped together. 

**BOOM.**

The Event is Now is Later is Over is Forever for them.

The Axle that was the Eye was-is-would be destroyed, Changed, inverted and warped beyond its own recognition, and was sharing the Experience with the Wheel of the Fears and the followers of the same. Sum the Extinction did a similar number on their acolytes, detonating them from afar.

It was all going away. Sum and Jon were going with it.

_**Doesn’t hurt,**_ Sum thought, having no mouth to speak it. _**I really thought it would.**_

_So did I,_ Jon thought back. 

Their body was gone now, and only essence was left. Mind. Soul. Whatever. 

_Not bad, I suppose. Weird, but not bad. Like taking off a bunch of excess weight you didn’t know you were carrying._

_**Almost feels like being nascent. Never thought I’d be amorphous again.** _

_Can you tell how the Change is going?_

_**Feel for yourself.** _

Sum passed a glimpse-sensation of their work over to Jon’s consciousness. Mouthless, he grinned.

_Oh. Oh-ho-ho, that is diabolical._

_**Isn’t it, though?** _

_Wish I had it on film. Supposing the afterlife has anything to play films on. Or—or is this it, do you think? Just this light? Does it look familiar to you?_

Sum shook a head they didn’t have.

_**Never seen it before. You can’t just Know what it is, can you?** _

_Nope. The Beholding is beyond me now, or I’m beyond it. The Archivist is retired. Funny that I’m still here, really. Have we gotten too snarled into each other to go our respective ways? Or do you think maybe we really are heading to the same place? You know, provided we’re even moving anywhere._

_**Not sure. It doesn’t feel like we’re in motion. Just kind of lingering. But I…I-I don’t really feel…** _

_What?_

_**Dead. I mean, I feel Done. I feel Complete. But I don’t feel Over. This non-form I’m in now, it is familiar, but only because I recall being shapeless and inorganic before I became a human Fear. Before I Evolved. I feel like I’m still alive, but just—different. Do you feel dead, Jon?** _

Jon was quiet. He radiated concentration and inspection.

_I don’t know. I must have died, right? Hard not to die in the center of an eldritch nuclear blast. And, you know, kind of missing a body. That’s usually the first sign you aren’t alive. Maybe that’s just how it is for humans. You’re not supposed to ‘feel’ dead. Just like you’re moving on._

There was another ripple of thought.

_…But I’m not moving. I don’t feel any real ‘pull’ or ‘push’ or anything. It feels like I’m waiting._

_**Mm. You know what it reminds me of?** _

_What?_

_**The place behind the Door. You know, if it had been created by a Designer that was less about an endless non-space of infinite darkness, and more into…what would you call this look?** _

Jon looked around. He could do this from all angles now.

_80’s fantasy magic motif. Like we’re inside one of those Technicolor crystal palaces full of rainbow prisms. But there’re no real surfaces here, are there? It’s just colors. If I had a nose, I’m sure I’d smell potpourri. Maybe incense. If I had ears, I’d be hearing classical music mixed with soft synth. If I had skin, I’d feel like I was in that springtime zone where there are no allergies and the rain’s just stopped and the air is perfectly fresh, not winter-bitten or summer-boiling, but just right; like this was how I was always meant to feel…_

Sum almost mustered up a joke of a thought—

**_(But tell me how you really feel, Jonathan ‘Narration Addict’ Sims.)_ **

—then stopped. They drifted around or through or above or below him. Doing their best to simulate laying a hand on a nonexistent shoulder.

_**Do you think so, Jon? Or do you Know so?** _

_I…I think I Know it. How to do I Know it now? Isn’t the Eye, well, Not? Broken down, obliterated, repurposed, what-have-you?_

_**I’m looking for it right now. I must still be alive to even be able to do this, but that doesn’t make sense. I felt my avatars snuff out. All the avatars did when the Fears got hit with the Change, so how—?** _

“The Extinction is dead! Long live Sum!”

Sum and Jon both jumped out of their non-skin. That had been a voice. An actual voice.

“Sorry, couldn’t resist. Over here, kids.”

Sum and Jon followed the voice, wherever ‘over here’ was in a place like…wherever they were. The speaker was solidifying as they watched. They were becoming humanoid, whatever—whoever?—they were. Arms, legs, torso, head. Smile.

Eyes. 

Beautiful, resplendent Eyes.

“What do you think? Man? Woman? Neither? Everything? None? I won’t need a proper costume for a while, yet. None of us will. But I’d like to have some options set aside. Jon, you had a point about the aesthetic. Let’s run from there. Tell me what you think.”

The humanoid silhouette abruptly coalesced into a woman who looked like she’d been cobbled together from a fantastical, gauzy perfume commercial, a cartoon for girls involving magic scepters and the Power of Love, and the distilled essence of the song, “Xanadu.” She hovered before them, her chromatic hair and the drapes of her improbable ensemble floating around her as if caught in water. 

“Well?” she asked, almost laughing. Her cheeks glittered. Her Eyes churned idly between gradient hues, artful as kaleidoscopes.

Sum and Jon regarded her and each other.

_You look lovely,_ Jon offered. _Very, ah, magical._

“I thought so too. Quite a distinction, this. Eldritch versus Magical. Cosmic Horror versus Celestial Fantasy. Innate Cruelty versus Innate Kindness. It’s harder to get your head around the latter rather than the former, isn’t it?”

She, whoever she was, rotated leisurely in place. As she did, the flow of her hair and her garments trailed out around her like a comet tail, rippling with a slideshow of Archived horrors…

…And other things. Softer, brighter, lighter joys. 

“The idea of Entities of such colossal, reality-warping power, using their strength to help others, to create beauty, to just…be nice. And without an ulterior motive? Unheard of. Unthinkable. Suspension of disbelief doesn’t begin to cover how sappy, how syrupy, how sentimentally-sugared such a concept is. It’s a notion reserved for little children who are still new and gullible enough to believe that the world has good people and good intentions. Father Christmas and tooth fairies and benevolence for benevolence’s sake; all the same schlock. 

“It’s really no wonder the Fears happened rather than Joys. The mind is always so ready to accept and expect the worst before they ever anticipate the best. The thing I was made out of, the oldest of them, the beating heart of it all—ironic, considering—it was bored to tears the moment they came into existence. Even not Knowing the future, it Knew that it would never Experience anything worth retreading twice. There’s only so many times you can Watch the same reruns of terror throughout the millennia, even the favorites. Like chewing the same wad of gum for eternity, hoping there’s one last drop of flavor left in it somewhere, but Knowing it’s done.

“It Knew something had to Change. The board had to be wiped clean. Of itself, first and foremost—it had never Experienced a proper demise. A one-time only sensation. But the other Fears, as well. One trick ponies, the lot of them. It all had to go.

“Hence, the Extinction, the Terrible Change, the Future-Without-Us. Sum.

“Hence, Jonathan Sims, the Archivist, the Key-to-the-Door. Jon.

“It was never happier than when it was Watching you two. Experiencing you. Your stories. The only regret it had as it Changed into its inheritor was not ceasing to Be, but Knowing it would not get to See what you do next. Seeing you two, I Know I’m lucky to have the chance myself.”

_You—you’re the Eye?_

“I am no more the Eye than the gold that made an ingot is still that brick once it’s melted and molded into a sculpture, Jon. You Knew that—Know it—but I’m working on explanation rather than just dropping plain, unvarnished Fact in your head and calling it done. Knowledge plus Understanding; an intriguing concept. An improvement, ala your Evolutionary process, Sum. I Know, I Understand. I am the inversion of my Fearsome predecessor, just as powerful, retaining the core traits, but adapting them, polishing, refining, expanding on them.

“All of us are. You can feel it happening, can’t you, Sum?”

_**Yes. The inheritors, they’re all forming now. Finishing the transition.** _

The Eye’s inheritor beamed at them. Literally. Iridescence flowed from her in soft waves.

“And are they what you’d hoped for? As Terrible in the Fears’ perspective as expected?”

_**Even worse. If I had teeth, I’d have cavities simply existing beside them.** _

Jon sighed sans lungs. It was an un-sound of relief.

_Then it worked. The Fears are really gone._

“Mm. Nearly all.” The Eyes, brimming with the aurora borealis, with the frothing of galaxies, looked to Sum. “We have one late bloomer still cooking. Not in the same way as the rest. You’ve never needed any shoving or cataclysmic rewrite to Change, Sum. But, even subconsciously, you cannot help being an overachiever. If all the Fears are getting inverted, that means _all_ of them.”

_**What?** _

_What does that mean?_

“Just what it sounds like. Sum, regardless of your evolutions and tweaks and titles, you have always been the Extinction. You have been the End that precedes the Replacement. Always working on destroying what Is to make way for the What Will Be, never looking back. Never satisfied. Never reminiscing. Always, always, you are focused on the furthest edge of the Present, eager for the Future. So much so, that you nearly risked scraping humanity off the drawing board. Just because.

“For good or for ill, you can’t deny that as far as Earthly lifeforms go, they are the most impressive fruit of your labors. There is so much in them, Sum. So much of…everything. There are a billion, a trillion facets to their minds—the potential of them, hero or villain or simple wanderer—is beyond anything the creatures that preceded them could ever have hoped to contain. They may destroy themselves. They may save themselves. They may create something entirely new going into the Future they make.

“But the point stands: humanity is the most intricate creation your planning ever produced, Sum. You Changed before you could carry out your original plot, not just because Jon stuck a timely needle in your ego, but because, on some level, you were already registering the fact that you were making a mistake. 

“If you had reached the point of completed vengeance and stood with your sickle poised over humankind’s throat, you would not have been able to stop yourself from culling them too—and you knew, even without having to Know, that you would regret it all your endless life. So, you sparked another Change in yourself.”

Her smile was a sunrise.

“And that Change hasn’t quite finished. Not yet.” She waved the whole speech off, cutting both Sum and Jon short as they were about to speak-think. “Which all sounds very pretty, but doesn’t explain what you want to know. Sorry, but it is so fun to get into the monologue of it all. I’ve never had a mouth before, or a voice, or any impulse to go into exposition. It’s so new! So thrilling! But, to get to the point: 

“You have been the Extinction. You had to remain the Extinction long enough to unmake the Fears. But now that that’s done, you can finish the Change in full. I think it may be your last.”

_**But into what? Will I hate myself, what I become?** _

_No,_ from Jon. _No, that doesn’t line up._

_**How’s that?** _

_Think about it. People who are constantly revising, redoing, revamping—people who are never satisfied with what they’ve made or what they are—that’s kind of been your running theme all this time, hasn’t it? If you’re Changing into your antithesis, I think that has to mean you’ll become an Entity that doesn’t want to Change anymore. An Entity who’s content._

_**A nice word for ‘stagnant.’ Static, stale, stationary—,** _

_Sum._

Sum regarded Jon on all sides. Jon gave his best impression of seriousness without having an expression or tone to do so. 

_There’s a difference between Changing out of habit and Changing because you think it will make things better. Same as there’s a difference between being stuck in a rut and just being…happy._

“Well put, Jon. But that’s not the whole of it. Not what you’re worried about, Sum. You could be glad or sad or mad or bad, but if you’re just sitting there doing nothing for all eternity? I think that would be what finally managed to drive you insane. But that isn’t what’s coming. You’ll still have something to get up to—hobby, job, purpose, whatever you want to call it. Only, in your case, it’s going to be an entire inversion of your original essence.” 

She glowed. The domain glowed with her. Visions of rediscovered treasures, of ancient seeds from long-dead harvests planted and flowering, of old loves becoming new, of renaissances built on the bones of dusted-off grandeur, the retro, the vintage, the classics coming back again and again, too good to be thrown away into the dustbin of time. 

Of a mythic old Bird, huge and flaming, bursting from its own ashes. 

“The reverse of Extinction. Reversal. Renewal. Revival. Rebirth. If we want to be gauchely symbolic,” she winked at Jon, “we could go with Resurrection. But in this case, I think there’s only one word that Sums it up best...” 

Sum wished they had a throat to gag with. 

And was shocked to find they did. 

_Sum?_

**“Oh. When did this happen?”**

‘This,’ was Sum turning solid once more. Congealing into something human-shaped. Specifically, into— 

**“Um.”**

Jon radiated the impression of huffily crossed arms. 

_That’s identity theft. I’m finding a lawyer somewhere in the afterlife and I’m suing._

**“Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. And anyway, I didn’t mean to—,”**

“They really didn’t, Jon. They simply snapped back to the first tangible form that seemed right. Customization options will come with time.” She smiled at Sum. “Any person or creature who has passed on, you can wear. Comes with your new territory.” 

**“Passed on? So he’s—,”** Sum looked to Jon. **“You really died?”**

_Again, not exactly a shock._

The cloud of him tried to shrug. 

_Hell of a payoff too, considering._

**“Jon—,”**

“Jon, Sum?” 

They looked to her. 

“You’re welcome to stretch your moment out as long as you like; time is still somewhat in limbo, you know. There isn’t a single inheritor yet who’s solid enough to repair the natural laws and turn the world back. None of them are put-together enough to put a dent in the trauma the world’s people are only just now becoming aware of. 

“But you are. That’s part of being the equal opposite to what you have been, Sum. If the Extinction was incurable injury, you are healing. If the Terrible Change was all forward, you are the Wondrous Repair, all backward. Which brings me back to my favorite word for this Entity you’ve made of yourself.” 

She grinned. There was no menace in it, Sum saw. It was only the glee of a parent about to see their child open the gift she had sworn just couldn’t be found, couldn’t be bought. Until it was. 

“Sum. What’s in your hand?” 

Sum looked down. The Big Red Button was gone, as was its wound. In the palm that had been copied from Jonathan Sims’ scarred body, there was a tape recorder. Every button had been pried out except one. 

All at once, they Knew. So did Jon. 

_Well. Would’ve been nice to have that from the start._

**“Wouldn’t have worked. Not until now. Want to do the honors with me?”**

_…I’ll try._

Jon extended himself out and down. There was a phantom tingle over Sum’s flesh hand as they reached over to the recorder and hit the only button left. 

Rewind. 

The Event is Now is Then is Back is Back is Back, Back, Back, _Back_ — 

Done. 

They hold tight to each other another minute. Two. No one’s eyes dare open. There’s no knowing if this is some new surreal trick. There could be something horrid crouching outside the circle of their huddle, waiting for the first one of them to raise their head to attack. 

But the light _is_ gone. As is the noise. It’s just the sound of their breathing now. 

And other noises. Distant and mundane. 

Traffic. A dog barking. Somewhere, a plane takes off. 

A silent contest is held to see which of them will do the foolish thing and dare to peek, when a hand comes down on someone’s back— 

“Ms. Tonner?” 

—and all of them leap up as one, all making nigh identical half-shouts of threatened shock. Even the Admiral yowls. 

Rosie throws up her hands in defense or surrender and backs up several long steps. She gawks at them all. But with only two eyes. Her eyes. They can even blink. 

“Uh, hi. Everyone. Just, um, wondering what you were up to. Is all. Didn’t realize this was a-a private matter. I’ll just leave you to it.” Before they can stop her, she’s walk-jogging briskly back into the Institute. 

Specifically, the Fanshawe Institute. It is just as old as the Magnus Institute had been, just as stately, but without the ominous air that had been so intrinsic to its brick and wood. Somehow, it was just the opposite. The paint brighter, the grass greener, the metals gleaming, the windows like sheets of crystal. It seems to sweat welcome, to invite a purging rather than a reliving of fear. More than that, it welcomes visitors of all kinds. Those with stories to share, or those looking to peruse the newest wing under construction—a museum. 

Later, they will discover that somehow, at some vague point in time, the Fanshawe family had bought out the Institute, renaming and re-purposing it. 

“Oh, of course people are still welcome to come in and give their statements,” Rosie would tell future inquirers. “But the new management is focusing the Archives more on an ‘active academic’ approach. Take statements, record evidence, seek out the source, and, if it is a confirmed, you know, bogeyman sort of situation, we’ll have it taken care of. If it’s something else—something benign, something benevolent—we investigate that too. And, you know, let that sort of thing go about its business. 

“But that’s all on the side these days. Most of our work is on the scholarly side. Theology, paranormal records, preserving genuine arcane artefacts; the good ones, anyway. The safe ones. We’ve disposed of most of the artefact storage, finally. I’ve got a framed picture of the day we burned the Leitners. Occult bibliophiles, feel free to send your complaints and bottled tears to management. We’ll also be expanding to public education on both the arcane and esoteric bric-a-brac, as well as general information on the theistic and pagan backgrounds of a lot of today’s forgotten cultural foundations, hence the museum.” 

That is Later. 

This is Now. 

Now, they are standing in front of the Fanshawe Institute, staring at the world around them. A world that is almost exactly as it was before the Fears came. 

Only almost, because it is different, ever so slightly. Conditioning makes them wary—if a thing has Changed, it can only be to make it Terrible. 

But it isn’t. Everything feels _lighter_ somehow. Like millstones they had been carrying for so long had been stealthily plucked off their necks and they were now able to stand up fully for the first time. 

Martin Blackwood looks up at the sky. Bottomless and blue, but not yawning in hungry menace. Just the sky, its few clouds striping it like bursts of cotton stuffing. 

“He did it,” he tells them. Or maybe no one but himself. “I don’t know how, but he did it. No one will ever know. No one will ever care. But you did it, Jon. Y-You—you—,” 

It’s too much, then. It will be too much for a long while. Here and now, he collapses to his knees as his face breaks open in a mask of hurt and mourning. He almost doesn’t feel the other arms that fold around him. He lets them. Feels the dampness of others’ cheeks stain his back and shoulders. 

And the world, turned back, polished bright, goes on with its business. 

Someplace else, behind a new Door, in a realm of ongoing color, a meeting is taking place. A family introduction as much as a reunion. 

Who are you? 

Who are _you_? 

And you? And you? And you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, and you? 

They marvel at themselves and at each other. And laugh, with uncharacteristic unkindness, at the disgust the Entities that were their building materials would feel at the sight of them. 

“Hey, is it alright if I call dibs on, The-Fucker-Had-It-Coming as one of my big fancy titles? Because I really want it.” 

“Arm wrestle you for it.” 

“Do we have arms?” 

“Looks like it. Mine are better.” 

“Debatable.” 

Others were busy entertaining each other with their respective visuals. Displays of spectacle and luster and psychedelic phantasmagoria that were volleyed back and forth, seeing how far they could extend their imagination. 

Some rested, enjoying the novelty of being able to rest. They did not sleep, exactly, but they could luxuriate in the feeling of being in a still state of comfort. 

All of them, at some point or another, swarmed their guest. The tiny, vital essence of a human who had had so much done to him and done so much in turn. Him and Sum. 

He couldn’t go any direction without being cornered by one of them and their fresh litany of questions or thanks or a rough draft of upcoming projects, did it look alright, was it human-ready, what did he think? There was hardly time to answer before another of them was scooping him up and running off. 

Sum had seen enough of Jon’s memories to liken the scene to a party Georgie had once thrown in her flat. One in which the Admiral had found himself pinned on all sides by drunken college students’ hands in a kind of perpetual petting machine. Jon's only respite so far had been to take cover with the Entity that had been made out of the Buried, one of the drowsier siblings. The siblings who had been reshaped from the Spiral and the Stranger were trying valiantly to either coax Jon out or tip their dozing kin over. The Entity that was carved out of the Hunt loped over, shooing them off with a shield they hadn’t possessed until it occurred to them that they should have one. 

“Joys, Sum. You can call them what they are.” 

Sum looked to their side. She was there again. Whoever she was. 

“I’ve been thinking about that. I am still made of Too Much Knowledge. But I don’t like the idea of hanging around inert, sponging up secondhand experiences. I’d rather like to _do_ something. Use all my Knowing for something other than simply sitting around holding unused Facts in my lap.” 

**“A teacher?”**

“Not quite. Something more hands-on. I want to be involved myself. To do, to make. To inspire outright rather than leaving Knowledge like Easter eggs and hoping someone catches on. I want my Knowledge to seed Action and snowball into new Knowledge, new inspiration.” 

**“The Muse?”**

“Mm. Perhaps. Have you decided which R title you’ll be sticking with?” 

**“Sum is simpler.”**

“True.” 

They watched Jon taking refuge again, this time ducking into a swarm of swirling insects. Butterflies and honeybees, ladybugs and moths. This turned out to be a miscalculation, as the swarm discovered it weighed more than a soul, and could physically carry the same. Cue Jon making a very interesting spiritual shriek as he was abducted by a gang of fluttering bugs. 

**“I was ready to blame this sort of thing on the Web, but now I wonder if this is all just him.”**

“He has that aura, doesn’t he? You look at him and think, ‘You know what, I think I need one of those. I’ll just pick that up while I’m out.’ And then you do.” 

They watched the Vast’s inheritor blow him away next, balancing him on the sensation of Flight rather than a Fall, spinning clouds and neon dawns out of themselves, whirling it on into a starry night to make van Gogh’s painting weep from envy. Though he had no mouth, Jon laughed. 

**“…How long can he stay here?”**

“As long as Wendy might have stayed in Never-Never Land. Potentially forever. If no one lets him out the Door. Before you ask, no, even I’m not sure what exists after a soul truly goes on its way. Could be nothing. Could be there's a place for the good and one for the bad. Could be reincarnation. Could be there’s a great swirling Mind out there somewhere that everything slips back into, rejoining the Whole. Could be a million things. My Sight doesn’t go that far up, alas. Above my paygrade. But yes, Sum. He could stay. I Know that the Joy made from The End is busy finetuning certain afterlives. Little practice paradises. Nirvanas and Elysian Fields, things of theism and personal prayers.” 

**“Is this where other humans will end up now, when they die?”**

“No. They might go to the The End’s inheritor, but not here. This is our home. Jonathan Sims is just the one stray in several billion who found himself in our midst by dint of who and what he was. They love him, of course. They’d be happy to have him around ad infinitum.” 

Sum’s hands fumbled with each other. Even knowing they were only holding their own hands, the feeling of the old scars gave the sensory illusion of— 

**“Does he want to stay?”**

“You could ask him” 

Sum looked at her. 

“…He believes this is as far as he’s going. As much of a happy ending as he can hope for. He’s aware that the Joys will be going to work on the world soon, dappling it with their presence, giving humanity a helpful push. If he had eyes, he’d weep in amazement that something, anything good is finally happening because of something he was part of. Something he did. But he does mourn all that was lost to get here. Not here, beyond our Door, but just having a world without the Fears. Dead friends. Dead innocents. Even some dead avatars, who he suspects had even less choice than him in their making. He regrets. He grieves.” 

**“And he misses the One He Loves. Doesn’t he?”**

It wasn’t a question, so the Muse didn’t answer. 

**“Even here. Even with all this, he misses him. All of them.”**

“He does.” 

**“How far can I take this? What I am?”**

“That’s up to you, Sum.” 

Sum watched Jon fly. And thought. 

It wasn’t a grave, because they weren’t in a graveyard. There was nothing to bury either. But it was still a funeral, for all that. An unfairly pretty day for it, too. All spring blues and budding blossoms. All that time stuck in the Archives’ perpetual dreariness, and now the world decided it was time to break out the sunshine and birdsong. 

“Is it alright to do this here?” 

“I don’t care.” 

No one argued. That Martin was talking at all after the spree of intermittent sobbing and silence was an improvement. They thought. Hoped. 

He had most of what they were going to bury. A pair of Jon’s old glasses, abandoned once his Eyes improved too much to need them. A jacket. A packet of false starts to a hundred poems Jon had tried to write and cut short—Martin had caught him working on it during one of their pauses to rest their legs, and he had gone so red, so flustered at his inability to get it right. 

He had refused to believe Martin when he claimed the result was actually rather spectacular as poems went. Martin had titled it, “False Starts, True Ending,” and kept it in his pack the rest of the way. When he’d unearthed it the day after the world turned back, he had gone immobile with fresh grief. 

Melanie had brought, of all things, a scalpel. 

“The one he used on the bullet.” 

Georgie had brought one of two shirts. One to bury, one to cradle the Admiral in. He nuzzled her and it in equal measure, purring. 

Daisy had a blanket. A thing Jon had brought from home, back when they had felt safe enough to leave the Institute on their own. They had shared it back and forth as time went on, dozing uneasily. But always easier if the other was close. 

Basira had his pen. What had once been his favorite, because of course Jon had favorite stationery. It had been a graduation gift from one of his professors, a heavy, professionally embossed thing spotted with tiny gold constellations. _Reach for the Stars_ curled down one side in calligraphy swirls. Jon had told her to keep it, claiming he didn’t like looking at it anymore. 

All these things were folded into the blanket and the blanket went into a small wooden box and the box went into the earth. The ground was soft from a light drizzle that had tapered off before the morning had finished. Everything smelled fresh in the little protected woodlands; new. Alive. 

They smoothed the dirt over it. 

There was no headstone, just a wooden marker. Daisy had cut and sanded it. She’d burned in the words: 

JONATHAN SIMS  
1987—2020  
_He saved more than the world would ever believe._

It was hammered into the soil until it stood. For however long it would stand before some park patrol found it and had it yanked up, the contents likely unearthed and taken away. 

And that would be it. 

“This is it,” Martin rasped. “This is really all he gets. After all of it. They don’t—none of them even remember him. How is that possible? Mass amnesia of, o-of the Fears’ world, sure, I-I get scrubbing the trauma out, but _him_? They don’t even remember his name? That he existed? Not even the people at the Institute, the place we practically lived in, and none of them, just—they just—,” 

Basira steeled herself. Her hand was slim and hard in Daisy's. 

“There was a statement about something like this. A man with a vase that erased things. Wiped them out of universal memory. The Spiral’s work. Maybe, maybe when he—when he went out, something like that affected—,” 

Martin whirled on her. 

“ _I don’t give a shit about how!_ I don’t care about the logistics, or the reasons, or the fucking excuses! I care that this world—,” his eyes seared all of them, branding, blurring with another wet glaze, “—that the _people around him_ shat on him, day in and day out, while he was being chewed up and mangled by the darkest, cruelest monsters that ever existed, blaming himself for every hideous thing that happened, and everybody and their grandmother piled on to blame him too, and then! And _then_ , after the whole world went to hell, it was him. Jonathan fucking Sims, tapped by yet another god-level Horror, who sacrificed himself to save us. To save the entire goddamn, thankless world, and he doesn’t even get a body to bury. He doesn’t even get to be a fucking _memory_ to anyone but us. 

“Do you know what’s _especially_ funny, though? Downright hilarious? Helen tried to needle him about him ‘not deserving’ me. Isn’t that rich? Man blows himself to less than molecules to save the world and he doesn’t ‘deserve’ some—some dithering cheerleader in a sweater. His useless tagalong of a partner, who did nothing but burn a few pieces of paper and stick his foot out to trip up an evil sea captain. 

“Christ, I’d worked so hard to save him, and I got booted into the damsel-in-distress spot at the last second like an idiot. And when the world turned inside out, what did I do? Walked along. Chatted. Watched him pour bile into the recorder because I was just too soft to stomach listening to him. I didn’t even—a-at the Panopticon, the last thing he said was that he loved me. And I wasted my breath just screaming at the door. At the Eye. And then he was gone. 

“For all of that, he gets a hole full of detritus, a piece of wood, and us. For all the fucking good we were to him.” A hoarse noise barked out of him. “Doesn’t even get a proper eulogy.” 

Martin’s mouth worked, wanting to say something else, something better. It was just more rusty, rasping sound. It broke up into smaller, muffled cries as he knelt beside the fresh-turned earth and shook. 

A shadow passed over him. He tensed, thinking someone was about to make the mistake of patting his back. Instead, he saw Daisy kneeling across from him. Not looking at him, but at the slab of wood. Her eyes were sunken, bloodshot. 

“You’re right,” she said, still not looking from Jon’s name. “It’s a shit ending to a fucked up life. You were the best thing he had going in it. The rest of us? Whether we want to blame it on some freaky supernatural Spidery influence, or us just being assholes who didn’t know how to communicate, or didn’t want to bother, we just heaped more shit on his plate. Because we were scared of what being around him might mean. Because we couldn’t tell if it was really Jon talking to us, or something taking him over, replacing him. Pick a bullshit excuse. We had plenty. 

“But the real reason? The one I think we all fell back on? We knew he’d take it. Didn’t we, Basira?” 

“Daisy, we never meant t—,” 

“Doesn’t matter. Same way ‘not having all the context’ doesn’t mean shit for you two, Melanie. Georgie.” 

“We didn’t—,” 

“Doesn’t. Matter. The same way it ‘didn’t matter’ that he was getting his guts and his brain and his spirit tied in spooky knots by the Eye, rewriting him into the Archivist the way I got remade by the Hunt, right? I mean, for fuck’s sake. Did we really think Jon _wanted_ to have his diet switched from his grandpa ice cream and ginger ale to eating people’s fucking nightmares? Did we honestly believe he _wanted_ his friends to get killed by the monsters that decided to fuck with his life? Really? 

“Or was that just the easiest assumption? To just pile everything into the ‘Well, He’s Turning into a Scary Avatar, Pool’s Open!’ category so we could make shrugging him off, or suspecting him, or cutting him down that much more guilt-free?” Her hands were shaking where they had clamped onto her knees. Veins stood out and her eyes were bright as pink glass. “Someone, anyone, please give me a plausible alternate theory. A different excuse for why it took this long—took the fucking apocalypse itself—to get us to this point. To acknowledge what we’ve done, to know to be sorry. Please.” 

Quiet stretched. The Admiral meowed. 

Melanie collapsed her cane and moved to sit. Georgie knelt with her, letting the Admiral hop out to pace circles around the turned soil. Even buried, he snuffled at all the Jon-scented things underneath. When he flopped expectantly on his side, Georgie rubbed him. 

“Back in the Panopticon, when he brought me out of it? When he cleared The End out of me completely and I could be afraid again? I was—Jesus, terrified out of my mind. And I think, if I’d been like I was before, I’d have chewed him out. Like he’d taken away some advantage, not fearing anything. But that Eye power of his, the Archivist thing, the Beholding. It did more than just take The End’s hold off me. It was like this sudden explosion of Insight. Epiphany. 

“And I know it wasn’t Jon doing that bit, because it showed me everything I had done because of that fearlessness. And it _hurt_. It just—just pumped me full of shame for all the little things I’d done. 

“Blowing off my family when they were worried about me, thinking I was in some kind of spiral. I didn’t worry. Didn't care. 

“It showed me Jon, those last few times we crossed paths. How cold I was, already cutting him out of my life because I wasn’t afraid for him; I was just doing the maths in my head that said, ‘Being around him is dangerous, get rid of him. He will cause something unpleasant for you. For Melanie. Cut him out.’ No frills. I’d loved him, still cared about him, but the part of me that should have been afraid for what might happen to him was gone. Dead. 

“It showed me you, Melanie. Getting worse. Vicious. Snapping and slashing at everything. And there I was, mildly concerned, but not afraid. Not for you. Not even for me; if you went completely mad, if you wound up killing me, oh well. I’d die. Whatever. It just kept getting bigger in me, that deadening. Like a tick feeding off all the things that had made me _me_ before all this. Sucking out all the care with all the fear, and who gave a shit if it hurt anyone around me? 

“The Eye showed me that. Showed me exactly what it was that Jon had come to my door for that day before things went sideways at the Institute. All the eldritch bullshit Jon was trying to juggle on his own, that he never told me and Melanie because we wouldn’t give him a second. Because we couldn’t dare risk something as hazardous as a conversation. It showed me that Distortion thing, that _Helen_. What she said, what she—,” 

Tears welled and storm clouds built in her face. One hand shook in Melanie’s. Her other had to ball into a fist to keep from hurting the Admiral. 

“That bitch. That two-timing, gaslighting _bitch._ She—yeah. That. All that and more. The Eye force-fed me all kinds of fun scenes like that; scenes that I Knew could have been avoided if, if I’d known to be afraid for him. For us. For more than my own little island of ignorance, far away from your haunted house bullshit in the Institute.” 

“Out of sight, out of mind,” Melanie put in. Her voice was a tired, flat note. She put a hand out towards the sound of the Admiral and he went obligingly to her reaching fingers, stroking himself with her. “Yeah. I got a dose of that too, I think. My own internal slideshow of fuckups. All the crap I laid on other people because I was mad, three times as much given to Jon. Blaming him for taking out the fucking bullet? What the hell was I on? I Saw it all, clear as day. Saw Jon’s side too. All the shit he was wading through while I was busy swinging knives around and being upset. And you know what? 

“I’m willing to bet you got the same, Daisy. You too, Basira. Because the Eye Knew we wouldn’t be seeing Jon again after that. Wouldn’t be able to change anything, to make up, to say sorry, to grow into anything new after…after it was all done. So it made sure we went away feeling like shit, Knowing all the worst of what we’d added to his life. All the little barbs and big barbs and blame and bitterness we dumped on him because we knew he wouldn’t fight back. Not without looking like a _monster-in-the-making_. 

“Am I wrong?” 

Daisy almost spoke. Then: 

“No,” Basira whispered. “No, you’re not.” Her throat worked and her knuckles rose up to mash against her lips, the old posture of deep thought. “I got my own dose from the Beholding. A nice heavy shot of guilt to leave on. But it showed me more than what effect I had on Jon, on the mess around the Archives. It showed me the Web. It was never making us act the way we did, around Jon or otherwise. All it did was arrange things so that just the right people wound up as his ‘social circle.’ People just good enough to want to do the right thing, to be padding for him when the monsters came around, but also big enough assholes that he couldn’t turn to us as friends. Isolation in a crowd. 

“I’ve—I’ve never been friendly to begin with. Personable. It always took ages for me to let anyone in, to even register as someone important and not just…clutter. Another name to know. Another body to be aware of in my space. I’ve never looked into any psychobabble behind it, never dwelled on it. Never needed to. There was always work to do, things to decipher, to solve, to conquer. Puzzles. Daisy. 

“So when the Archives crashed down on my life, all these surreal pantheons and avatars and occult horrors at once, the walls I already had got thicker. Sharper. And Jon was—I don’t know. I kept wanting to Know, the way he could, what he really was. Was he my friend? Was he some bogeyman wearing his skin? Was he the same as Daisy, wobbling on the edge between humanity and inhumanity? Would the Archivist just—just hatch out of him someday, out of the blue, and go around slurping our minds and sanity out through our eyes? I didn’t know. 

“He seemed like Jon. He always seemed like Jon, even after finding out about his nibbling on live statements on the sly. I don’t think I was ever more afraid than I was then. I buried it, you know. Under the shouting, the threats, the oaths to go full Gertrude on him if he took it any further. For all the good it did. But I didn’t—couldn’t just Know. Was Jon really Jon? Was I talking to him or to a thing living in him or to some new actor from the Stranger or the Eye, laughing to itself at how easy the ‘Detective’ was to fool? Was everyone at risk because nobody could spot the difference? 

“I didn’t know. There was never a way for me to know. The Eye only shared its secrets with him, after all. Even fucking Elias—pardon, fucking _Jonah_ —couldn’t get straight answers out of the spooky voyeur the way Jon did. Because he _was_ Jon. The whole time, Archivist or no, it was always Jon. 

“And the Beholding waited until the last second to show me just how much of a monstrous shit I’d been to him all that time. 

“Then he killed himself, and the Eye, and the Fears, and saved the world. And here we are.” Her voice cracked at the last word. The fist against her lips ground harder, almost splitting the skin against her teeth. “Standing around a pit of nostalgic junk, spitting up useless apologies, feeling sorry for ourselves.” 

Basira breathed past her fist, her lips peeling up and back so that she bit into her knuckle. The glower that she had been trying to maintain twitched and crumpled at its edges. Traitor dampness shined around her eyes. 

“Fuck,” she hissed. “ _Fuck_ this whole _fucking_ thing. The Archives, the Fears, the whole pretty, perfect _fucking_ world that decided it could only happen after he was too dead to see it.” 

“Pardon?” 

Basira was the only one still on her feet, so she was the first to spin around, already tense. The others flinched where they sat. Confusion and reflexive worry washed over them. 

A crowd had appeared without any of them noticing. At least fourteen people in all. They wore armbands rather than full-black ensembles, citing what looked like a physical allergy to any clothing that wasn’t blindingly cheery. Pastels and neon and paisley and rainbow, oh my. 

The speaker at the front of their semicircle was a woman with an armful of forget-me-nots. She looked like an 80’s love song sounded. And her eyes were, of course, Eyes. 

“So sorry to interrupt, but is this the service for Jonathan Sims?” 

“You know it is,” a girl behind her hummed. Her eyes were gold. In her busy fingers, she was weaving. Not any silken design, but a crown out of four-leafed clovers. 

“It’s polite to ask,” the woman stage-whispered back. “I’m trying to get into the habit.” 

“H-Hey.” The fourteen newcomers looked to Georgie. “Who are you? How do you know Jon?” 

“Why wouldn’t we know him, Ms. Barker? He and the Extinction were the ones who made us. As to who we are, well.” The woman shrugged and her Eyes flashed with the innards of a hundred quartz caverns. “We’ve only finished figuring that out recently. Really made ourselves solid, picked out fresh monikers, the whole customization bit. Oh, hold on.” She turned back to face her friends. “No one wants to take a moment to rework their names, do they? Last chance before proper introductions.” 

Someone raised their hand from the back of the group. A dapper gentleman whose edges subtly shifted him from a Leyendecker ad to stage magician to a harlequin to a rock star to— 

“I’ve changed mine ten times in the last ten minutes. Is that alright?” 

“Your name, or your stage names?” 

“Yes.” 

“We’ll make do. Now then.” She waved brightly at the four people around the ersatz grave and a now-very-excited cat. “Hello! I’m the Muse. I was born from the smoldering carcass of the Eye. Pleased to meet you all officially.” 

“I’m the Fortune,” the girl with the clover-crown hummed. She laid the crown on her head and dug an idle toe in the soil, finding a buried gold watch. “Got made out of the Web. Planning’s all well and good, but blind luck always wins in the end, and all that.” 

“Hey,” from a ruddy young man still in his gym clothes. In his shadow was the silhouette of ancient athletes, of runners, of dancers, all moving at once as he bounced an anxious leg. “I’m the Vigor! Got carved out of the Flesh. Think health and fitness coach on—well, not steroids. Magic protein shakes, maybe?” 

“Magic Red Bull, I think,” the young woman beside him muttered, elbowing him back out of her space. He elbowed her back. The elbowing continued as she spoke up, “I’m the Guard. My bits came out of the Hunt. Protector vibe, you know. Keeping strong to keep things safe.” 

“I don’t feel safer,” said the Vigor, now in a headlock. 

“I’m saving everyone from you, it’s a public service—,” 

“Hi,” said a voice dripping with tranquility so thick it was nearly narcotic. It came from an androgynously willowy individual leaning against a tree. Their smile was all warmth, uncut relief. “I’m the Peace, made from the very unhappy matter of the Slaughter. Pretty self-explanatory.” They wobbled and nearly fell when a smallish girl suddenly leapt up onto their back, grinning and waving. She sweated the aura of a universal youngest sibling, the kind who holds tightest and looks up in awe at the eldest. Her eyes were all adoring pupil. 

“Same here!” she laughed as the Peace resigned themselves to piggyback. “I’m the Loved. The giving of love and knowing you’re loved in turn. Mushy stuff, you know. Made out of the Lonely’s maudlin mist.” 

“Mm,” a drowsy shape sighed behind her. He was slumped rather than leaning against his own tree, snug inside a plush and roomy coat, holding himself. “I am the Embrace; made of Rest and of Security and of Comfort.” He yawned, and the sound was a note of soft music. “I came from the Buried.” 

He was jabbed in the ribs by his neighbor. A woman draped in the velvet blue-blacks of evening. Her eyes were starlight. In the dark of her, stealthy things swam and spun and reveled. 

“Stay awake, dear. Hello,” she said, her voice low and forever. “I am the Secret. In me, there is quiet, there is freedom from the Norm, the escape from constant perception and judgment. Also, stargazing, because why not? No guesses what Fear I was born from.” 

“The Stranger?” sing-songed the theatre actor, now an opera singer. 

“Ha.” 

“It’s a fair assumption, they might have bought it,” said the sculptor, now a painter. He—now she, now he again—turned to bow for his audience. “Afternoon, all. I’m the Performer. I am every successful public speech, every title among the arts, every idol every gazed at with starry eyes and yearned to be. Once a cipher, utterly anonymous, now Known by all. Yes, it stung the motley-wearing Stranger exactly as much as you’d think. I’m—hhgh.” 

A hand graffitied with slow-moving tattoos shoved him aside. Its owner was riddled with shifting colors and visions. Solved equations, unheard of inventions, endlessly flowering revelations yet to be had. 

“In my spotlight, you prima donna.” She twisted around him, fluid as smoke. “Hi, I’m the Eureka. Considered the Epiphany or the Clarity or the Light Bulb Moment, but it just doesn’t sound as fun. I curlicued my way out of the Spiral. Whoop, air traffic.” 

She scrunched down as a wave of bees and butterflies flew overhead, coming to rest on a man who looked like he’d spent his life camouflaged in a forest’s undergrowth. Fungi and plants brimming with hidden cures and tinctures mottled his bare shoulders. Pollen-heavy flowers sprouted from the vines of his hair and wreathed his brow. There was no telling if he had eyes, for there were butterflies in the way; the spots on their wings blinked chummily. 

“Hello,” he said in a whisper. Ladybugs flew loose. “I am the Cure, made out of the Corruption. I am all the small lives that maintain the world for larger lives, keeping the Earth in health, growing the ingredients that are medicine’s building blocks. And I make honey, which is a nice bonus.” 

“You also keep getting your friends stuck in my updrafts,” a voice called some yards up. Everyone lifted their gazes to where a long-boned woman hovered on the air, trying to shoo a number of fluttering visitors from her face. “I’ve run into twenty breeds of moth up here, man. Oh, hey.” She waved. “I’m the Flight, I think you can guess my roots. My deal’s basically, you know, actual flight—the soaring dream, you know—and the metaphorical Ascension. The hope of climbing into all that wide, edgeless Space, of discovery and expansion into the star-shot infinity, and suchlike. But really, _flying_ , guys. Flying!” 

There was a momentary lull. The Flight frowned down at something to her lower right. 

“Hey. Psst.” 

Nothing. The Flight pulled off a sandal and chucked it down. 

“Hey! Your turn!” 

The sandal was thrown back up, almost whacking her in the nose. 

“Just a minute,” a fussing voice insisted. The crowd parted to show a man sitting cross-legged on the ground. Flora was growing rapidly around him, almost masking the makeshift workspace he’d made of the clearing. He appeared to be examining and re-examining an array of driver’s licenses, checkbooks, passports, wallets, keys, workplace IDs, smartphones, et al. “Hey,” he said, not looking up. “I’m the Construction. Yes, I was made out of the Desolation’s stupid, waxy, aggro corpse. Other fancy names include the Clean Slate, the Flourishing, et cetera. No, none of you can give me crap about already having them nailed down, not my fault you weren’t born already making stuff. Hey?” 

He reached blindly for his closest neighbor’s pantleg. 

“Hey, Outie? Outset?” 

“Thanks for spoiling my bit.” She hadn’t been facing the funeral to begin with, but presumably the way they’d come, eyeing something distant. When she looked over her shoulder at them, her eyes were windows. In them were two suns, perpetually rising. “Hi. Outset. The beginning of all things, the turning of corners into the New. Born when The End died. Anyway.” She looked to the Construction. “What?” 

“Do these look right?” The Construction held up the assorted cards. 

“You know they do.” 

“Just look.” 

The Outset looked. 

“They’re right.” 

“Knew it.” 

_“Wow—,”_

“Anyway!” the Muse cut in. “That’s most of us. Our fifteenth had a prior engagement, so no intro there. Still, we wanted to stop by before the service was over. Questions?” 

Several hundred of them, none of them voiced. For a moment, all the human parties could do was stare. The Admiral had no such issue. He was on his feet, his tail lifted exclamation point-straight, and darting through the forest of legs into the distance. 

“Admiral—!” 

“I’m watching him,” the Outset called back, not turning. The Admiral rushed over the horizon, meowing in glee. 

“Comforting,” from Melanie. Her hands were clamped tight around Georgie’s and her cane. “As the resident blind person here, I’d really appreciate someone explaining why they—why you,” she said in the newcomers’ direction, “don’t feel like avatars. You feel too big for that. Too much.” 

“Oh, hadn’t we made it clear, Ms. King?” the Muse hummed. “We aren’t avatars. We are capital E Entities in full. The Fears were turned inside out, Changed into forms they would loathe. So here we are in their stead: fourteen Joys. We are human-shaped Powers with human-shaped minds, built on the ecstasies of your kind and the misery of the Extinct Fears. And our Door has no lock. We can come and go as we like. We’ve not decided whether to fuss with avatars as yet. We’re rather new to the whole existing business. 

“Again, thanks to Jon. Him and the last-minute martyr of the Extinction. But that is a long story someone else can tell you. We’ll be out of your hair soon, once the rightful attendees show up. Keeping their spot warm, as it were. Oh, but since we’re here. Vigor?” 

“Yeah?” said the Vigor, trying to keep the Guard in a leg lock and coming perilously close to failing. 

“Forgetting something?” 

“What? Oh! Crap, yes, yes, yeah, on it! Melanie!” 

Melanie straightened. The others tensed. Georgie moved to block her. 

“Wh—,” 

“Catch this.” 

With a free hand, the Vigor flicked an invisible mass of something at Melanie’s head. It passed through Georgie like a shiver and struck Melanie full between the eyes. She yelped, spasmed— 

Then: 

“Oh, my God.” 

“Melanie!? Mel, what’d he do!?” 

“I… Georgie, I think…” 

Melanie took off her dark lenses. She saw Georgie gaping back at her. 

“Oh.” 

“There it is,” the Muse hummed. “Time, Outset?” 

“Nearly here,” the Outset called back. “The Admiral found him already.” 

“Right. Well, again, lovely meeting you all.” The Muse passed her bouquet into Martin’s numb hands. “I’m sure we’ll cross paths another time, once we’ve gotten a feel for things on the tangible side. Say hi from us, though, would you?” She whispered behind one hand. “Between us, this lot’s a bunch of saps. They’d try to trick him back over our threshold if they thought you weren’t looking. Like kids letting their foster cat go, really.” 

Martin gawked at her. 

“I—you—what?” 

“Hey, they’re going to want these.” The Construction was suddenly there, handing him what looked like a gift basket. All the identifying bits and bobs were in it, the faces of the cards tucked down so they couldn’t show. “Can’t really get a new start in the world without this stuff these days. That and a little luck to grease the bureaucratic wheels. Some undo buttons on certain official certificates, some sudden forgetfulness in people who might go asking questions. Right, Fortune?” 

“Already done, Connie,” the Fortune told her fingernails. “Who do you think I am?” 

“Just checking,” the Construction nodded at Martin, at all of them. “Nice meeting you.” 

“Bye,” the Muse sang with a parting smile. Her Eyes flashed, filling the clearing with prismatic light. Then the light was gone and the Joys were gone with it. 

A moment passed in which no one could quite recall how words were supposed to work. In fairness, no one had the faculty to form proper thoughts to convert into words either. Eventually, Basira and Daisy managed to collaborate. 

“What,” from Basira. 

“The hell?” from Daisy. 

It was enough to burst the dam. Questions flew. 

What was that? Melanie, your eyes! Were they gods? Did they have random feel-good magical gods walking around now? Martin, the basket, what’d he have in the basket? 

“O-Oh! Hold on, hold on, let me see—,” Martin juggled the bouquet a moment, got fed up, set it by the wooden marker, and finally rifled through the contents. He dug out some of the cards. He froze when he turned them over to their fronts. Frowned. “…What?” 

“Martin, come on, what is it?” Melanie asked, already on her feet and rushing over to look—because she could look now. Martin let her snatch them from his limp hand. She flipped through them, growing her own confused frown. “Okay, what?” 

“Melanie?” 

“They’re driver’s licenses,” Melanie said, half to herself as much as Georgie. “Jon’s is here. Tim’s, Sasha’s too. The real Sasha, I mean, not that thing that took her spot. And…some goth guy? Gerard Delano. Assuming the rest of the stuff in there has their name on it too. I don’t get it.” 

Basira came to her side, hand out. 

“Let me see.” She took them, scrutinizing the print. They didn’t appear especially eldritch and/or riddled with glitter. “Gerard Delano here is definitely Gerard Keay, the mysterious disappearing goth from some of the early statements. Died in America from a brain tumor. He held his mother’s last name all his life, but I got the impression there wasn’t exactly any love there. Jon once listened to a tape of what was supposed to be his father’s ghost talking to Gertrude. Eric Delano. Seemed to care a fair bit more about his kid than the homicidal missus. Jon had a chat with Gerard’s ghost too, once. But other than these belonging to a bunch of dead Archives-adjacent people, I don’t see what—,” 

The words stopped. Her breath stopped. Her eyes got very, very big. Daisy was already next to her, hand to her shoulder. 

“Basira? What’s wrong?” 

“The dates.” 

“What about them?” 

“These all say they got renewed this year. The day the world turned back.” 

“Wait, wh—,” 

“Typical!” came a man’s shout. It was almost a laugh. “We leave for a bit, and the cops are digging through our personal property!” 

A young woman snorted. 

“Couldn’t help yourself, could you?” 

Everyone turned, not sure to trust the voices, who they sounded like. But there they were. 

“Tim?” Martin croaked. And then, stunned at his own recognition, knowing that he knew her, “ _Sasha?_ ” 

Tim Stoker and Sasha James came waltzing out of the green shade and into the clearing. They didn’t wear black either. They looked too happy to be real. But they were. 

“Hey,” said Tim, grinning so hard his cheeks creaked. “Been awhile.” 

“Hi, Martin” Sasha offered, her eyes jewel-bright. “Don’t think I know most of your new friends. Hey, Melanie.” 

“H-Hey. Hi,” Melanie said, maybe. She wasn’t sure. One hand floated desperately out to Georgie. “This is, ah, Georgie. Jon’s ex. We’re together. I used to be blind two minutes ago and now I’m not. You and Tim are alive. I’m not sure if I’m having a hallucinogenic episode. Georgie?” 

“You’re not hallucinating, Mel.” 

“Good. That’s good.” 

“Good!” Tim chimed in. He nudged Sasha and nodded at Basira and Daisy. “Those two are Mrs. and Mrs. Aggro, I told you.” 

“Tim.” Sasha beamed sheepishly at them. “Basira and Daisy, right? Sorry about him.” 

“S’fine,” Daisy was pretty sure she said. Basira had walked up to meet the two of them halfway. She handed them their licenses. She hadn’t blinked yet. 

“The rest of the stuff you need is in the, uh, gift basket. I assume.” She looked from them to the two licenses still in her hand. “…Are they..?” 

“Sorry we’re late,” another voice crowed in the distance. “Also, tardy.” 

Sasha stuck her tongue out at the pun. Tim laughed. 

Everyone else went through their next phase of whiplash. 

Gerard Keay, now Gerard Delano, still beaming at his own witticism, lumbered into view. He, at least, had come wearing black. Albeit a very gothic, metal-studded, skull-spotted sort of black. He had not lost his staring tattoos, but had misplaced his poorly-done black dye, leaving his hair a summery color. His burns from scrapping with the Desolation were missing as well, if his bare arms were any hint. 

Beside him was a man who, at first glance, Martin almost refused to recognize. He had had dreams like this before. The moment Martin saw him, knew him, he’d wake up. Not so now. 

And really, he _was_ hard to recognize. All his scars were gone. The white had vanished from his hair. His eyes were not sunken hollows. There was an ecstatic cat purring like a backed-up car in his arms. He might have been his own younger brother. 

Jonathan Sims smiled at them. At Martin. 

Martin walked forward on legs he didn’t feel. He came to a stop in front of Jon, still staring. 

“Hi, Jon.” 

“Hello, Martin.” 

“Jon?” 

“Yes?” 

“Could you put the cat down, please?” 

“Gerry? Would you mind?” 

Gerard took the Admiral in two very outstretched hands—the Fears were one thing, but prying a cat from his apparent happy place was another—and retreated. 

“Thank you,” said Martin. 

“Y—,” Jon began and never finished. Martin leapt at him, trapping him in both arms and welding their lips together. Jon returned the favor. Somewhere on another planet, someone distinctly Sasha-sounding told someone Tim-sounding that he owed her fifty quid. 

It was a snug fit in the booth, even for the hefty semicircle seat, but they managed. Three people squashed into either side while the remainders pulled up their own chairs. The Admiral, playing the part of service cat, was tucked in Jon’s lap. They made enough chattering noise among each other to drown out the music. As luck would have it, the ice cream parlor was having a slow day, so there was no one around to complain about their laughing racket. 

“You have all the grandpa ice cream you want. I’m going to buy you a lifetime supply of rum raisin, those old lady candies, suspenders, whatever you need.” 

“You’ve missed some updates, Stoker,” Daisy said. “This one,” her elbow went into Jon who snorted around his spoonful, “turned out to be a closet punk once he stopped giving a shit post-coma. Neither tweed nor loafer to be seen.” 

“College clothes are comfort clothes,” Jon offered. 

“Should’ve broken out the guyliner again, Jon,” Georgie grinned over her mint chocolate chip. “Given the interns some heart attacks.” 

Martin looked bug-eyed between both of them. 

“I’d have had a damn heart attack! Jonathan Sims, how long have you been a punk without my knowledge?” 

“I was in a bad place, there were terrible influences…” he waved vaguely at Georgie. 

“Yeah? Is she the reason you were this guy back in uni?” Gerard, now Gerry, hummed over his phone. He turned it to face the table. 

“Oh, Lord,” Jon said trying to hide in his sundae while everyone else gawked at the photo. “Why couldn’t they keep that part of me wiped out of history?” 

“Because it would be a crime against humanity. Us, specifically,” Sasha declared, on the brink of cackling. “Jon, what _is_ that!?” 

“A phase.” 

“Jonathan Sims, age nineteen,” Gerry intoned, the living image of evil, “lead singer and songwriter of the, quote, ‘space rock opera cabaret band,’ The Mechanisms, seen here, also quote, _‘wooing the audience—,’_ ” 

Jon turned redder than the maraschino cherries. 

“I was being in-character! Their lead fell through and I was trying to be true to the material!” 

“I remember, Jonny D’Ville,” Georgie sing-songed. To Martin she stage-whispered. “I’ve got videos.” Martin grinned in uncut delight and held up his phone. Georgie got out her own, already tapping away. 

“You better CC me on that, Georgie.” 

“Same.” 

“Ditto.” 

“Got any photos? I want to make a motivational poster. Maybe a dozen.” 

“Will do.” 

Jon groaned. It almost hid his smile. 

Jon did not feel eyes upon him. None of them did. No creeping dread, no overhanging menace. Nobody turned to look out the parlor’s window. Which was just as well. They didn’t need yet another doppelganger scare. 

The man—if they were a man—staring in at them looked a great deal like Jonathan Sims. All the scars were intact, though. Their hair had gone so pale with shock it was entirely white. Dark sockets glowed with luminescent Eyes. Not yellow-black anymore. Something clearer. 

**“He’s happy,”** Sum breathed. 

“He is,” said Fortune. “They all are. Today will be one of the best of their lives. Better ones to come, whether they believe it or not. Not all micromanaged, but you know. As surprises.” 

**“Good.”**

“You don’t want to say anything to him?” the Muse asked. 

**“Of course I do. But I can’t think of what to say.”** They wrenched themselves away from the glass. **“I have work to do, anyway. People to check in on.”**

It was half-true. They knew already how those people were. 

Oliver Banks is sleeping like a blissful log in his own bed, dreamless. He will awake to discover that, somehow, the nightmare of his last few years really had been a nightmare. The people which Death’s tendrils had steered him into Ending were alive, going about their scientific business. He had never had his sanity and spirit killed. He was Oliver, and he was alive, and his soul was his. 

Agnes Montague has just met Jack Barnabas and he has just met her. If pressed—and they will not be—their personal histories will be hazy things. Agnes’ more than Jack’s. All they had to know was that they were young and healthy and unburdened by such things as destiny or hateful fire. When she kisses him for the first time, Jack will feel fever in his cheek. But nothing worse. Agnes will feel that warmth too, when she lets him kiss her. 

Helen Richardson comes to in her kitchen, wondering what time it is, and why she is crying so many happy tears. Why she is standing there, holding her coffee mug, deliriously ecstatic to be herself and no one else. 

Michael Shelley is weeping and laughing just as giddily, so confused about why he’s so thrilled to open and close the doors of his flat and see only the expected rooms on the other side. He will spend a week like that, perhaps longer, telling himself aloud that he is Michael, Michael, Michael, and glad of it. 

But they are only the most immediate projects. Others would follow, Sum knew. Once they were sure they’d gotten the process nailed down and his current subjects were on the right track. 

The Muse and the Fortune regarded Sum, then each other. 

“If you say so,” Fortune shrugged. “I’m going to go see if I like ice cream. And, you know, eating. They won’t notice me. You want anything, Muse? Sum?” 

“Oh, whatever has the most colors in it, please.” 

**“Rum raisin. What?”** they huffed as Muse and Fortune smirked. **“It’s technically his tongue, it knows what it likes.”**

“Alright,” Fortune hummed. She strolled inside. 

“…You lied.” 

**“Seriously, I remember what it tasted like to him, so I figured—,”**

“About not knowing what to say.” 

Sum stared at the pavement. 

**“It’s not something he needs to hear. Not now. Not when the One—when Martin is right there.”**

“If not now, when? When he’s old and grey and tipping over into the Outset’s hold; the beginning of his afterlife-forever?” 

**“Maybe. I can wait.”**

“For several things, I Know. But is he really on that list?” 

Before Sum could answer, the door opened again. Fortune cradled two cones. 

“It’s confirmed: ice cream is good. Cookie dough,” she said, brandishing her cone, “is best. Neapolitan for you, Muse.” 

“Thank you.” 

“Sum, I couldn’t hold all three, so I got some help.” She grinned. “No one noticed him getting up. Weird, right?” 

The door opened. Jon held the rum raisin cone. 

Sum went paralyzed, caught between wanting to move forward and wanting to flee. The Muse patted their arm. 

“We’ll leave you to it. Fortune,” she said, already walking in pace with the latter, “I have to say, I’m afraid you’re only half right. Ice cream _is_ a glory unto the senses, but Neapolitan is clearly superior.” 

“You only say that because you’re not having cookie dough,” Fortune assured. Their debate carried far away and around the corner. 

Sum stared at Jon. Jon stared back. He held the cone out. 

“It’s going to melt.” 

Sum inched forward and grabbed as much of the cone as he could without lessening Jon’s grip on it. 

“I’d say you look well, but I’ve seen all that in the mirror too often to be objective.” 

**“It’s odd, being like this. Being you, but with none of you in here with me.”**

“Comes with being your own person. Not exactly a roommate situation.” 

**“Right.”** A bead of ice cream rolled down over their knuckles. **“Jon, I—,”**

“Take this. Hold it, or I’m going to drop it.” 

Sum took the sweating cone. 

**“Jon—,”**

It was as far as they got before Jon’s arms were locked around them. His face was buried into the angle between scarred neck and shoulder, holding tight. Sum threw the cone aside and crushed Jon back, mashing their face into his new, unmarred neck in turn. 

“Waste of a good cone.” 

**“Don’t care.”**

They gripped each other tighter. 

“Thank you. Thank you for all of this, Sum.” 

**“Had a lot to pay back. Still do. …You know what I want to say?”**

“I can guess.” 

**“You can’t say it back, though, can you?”**

“Not the same way you would. Not for the same reason.” Jon huffed a fraction of a chuckle. “It’d be taking narcissism to levels I can’t begin to fathom.” 

**“I thought it was called self-love these days.”**

“Ugh.” 

**“Sorry.”**

“No, you’re not.” 

**“No, I’m not.”** Sum forced themselves to breathe. Jon did the same. **“I want to say it. Is it okay if I say it?”**

“Yes. If it’s okay for me to say it the way I mean it.” 

**“Yes. Yes, it is.”**

“Okay. Say it.” 

Sum turned their head enough to speak in Jon’s ear. Three words, meant in their way. 

Jon spoke the same three into their ear, meaning it his way. 

Their eyes burned in synch, leaking at the same time. Both sets of tears were clear. 

**“I should go. I don’t know how much time Fortune’s bought you.”**

“You could come in.” 

**“I—no. No, I don’t think so. Not for a while. If ever.”**

“You’re sure?” 

**“Yes. There’s work to do, anyway.”** Sum scrubbed their cheeks dry and affected a pompous stance. **“Some of us have jobs to do, _not-the-Archivist.”_**

Jon wiped his own face and tried to put on his early head archivist sneer. It didn’t quite fit over the grin. 

“Well, I’ll let you get back to it, _not-the-Extinction._ ” The grin broke through. “And, you know. Text when you can.” 

It was a strange thing, Jon decided, seeing yourself fumble for words. Then: 

**“I will.”**

“…See you around?” 

**“Not counting when you look in the mirror? Yes. I think you might. Goodbye, Jon.”**

“Goodbye, Sum.” 

Between blinks, Sum was gone. Martin opened the parlor’s door a moment later. 

“Jon? When did you come out here? We thought you fell in the toilet or something.” 

“Or got kidnapped?” 

“It crossed our minds. We—hey. Hey, _are_ you alright? Your eyes are all…” 

“It’s fine. I was just—ha.” 

Jon turned a smile brighter than the day on him. New tears rolled. Happy. Happy. 

“Just talking to myself.” 


End file.
